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THE CAREER OF 
LEONARD WOOD 




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LEONARD WOOD 



THE CAREER OF 
LEONARD WOOD 



BY 



JOSEPH HAMBLEN SEARS 




D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 

NEW YORK LONDON 

1919 



ETiSi 



COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY 

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 






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PBINTED m THE CNITBD STATIS OP AMEBICA 



TO GENERAL LEONARD WOOD 
By Corinne Roosevelt Robinson 

Your vision keen, unerring when the blind. 

Who could not see, turned, groping, from the light. 
Your sentient knowledge of the wise and right 

Have won to-day the freedom of mankind. 

Honor to whom the honor be assigned! 

Mightier in exile than the men whose might 
Is of the sword alone, and not of sight. 

You march beside the victor host aligned. 

Had not your spirit soared, our ardent youth 
Had faltered leaderless; their eager feet 

Attuned to effort for the valiant truth 

Through your command rushed swiftly to compete 

To hold on high the torch of Liberty — 

Great-visioned Soul, yours is the victory! 

November 11, 1918 

From "Service and Sacrifice: Poe-ns" 



Copyright, 1915, 1916, 1917, 1018, 1919, by 
Charles Scrlbner's Sons. 
By permission of the publishers. 



CONTENTS 

I. The Subject 11 

II. The Indian Fighter 25 

III. The Official 61 

IV. The Soldier . 77 

V. The Organizer 101 

VI. The Administrator 129 

VII. The Statesman 159 

VIII. The Patriot 201 

IX. The Great War 225 

X. The Result 257 



THE SUBJECT 



THE SUBJECT 

In these days immediately following the Great 
War it is well upon beginning anything — even a 
modest biographical sketch — to consider a few 
elementals and distinguish them from the changing 
unessentials, to keep a sound basis of sense and not 
be led into hysteria, to look carefully again at 
the beams of our house and not be deceived into 
thinking that the plaster and the wall paper are 
the supports of the building. 

Let us consider a few of these elementals that 
apply to the subject in hand as well as to the rest 
of the universe — elemental truths which do not 
change, which no Great War can alter in the least, 
which serve as guides at all times and will help at 
every doubtful point. They range themselves 
somewhat as follows: 

The human being is entitled to the pursuit of 
happiness — happiness in the very broadest sense 
of the word. No one can approach this object 
11 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

unless lie is in some way subordinated to some- 
thing and unless he is responsible for something. 
No man can get satisfaction out of life unless he 
is responsible for what he does to some authority 
higher than himself and unless there is some one 
or something that looks to him for guidance. 
Perhaps the existence of religion has much to do 
with this. Perhaps prayer and all that it means 
to us belongs in the category of the first of these 
elementals. Certainly the family is an example 
of the second. 

The family is the unit of civilization — always 
has been and always will be. The father and the 
mother have their collective existence, and their 
children looking to them for guidance, support 
and growth, both physical and moral. The mo- 
ment the family begins to exist it becomes a re- 
sponsibility for its head, and around it centers a 
large part of the life and happiness of the hu- 
man being. 

In like manner the state is the unit to which 
we are subordinated. 

These constitute two examples of responsibil- 
ity and subordination which are necess?iry to the 
12 



The Subject 

acquirement of civilization, of happiness and of 
the I'ewards of life. 

Wherever the state has presumed to enter too 
far into the conduct of the family it has over- 
stepped its bounds and that particular civiliza- 
tion has degenerated. Wherever the family has 
presumed to give up its subordination to the state 
and gather unto itself the responsibility through 
special privilege, that particular state has begun 
to die. 

In modern civilization it is as impossible to 
conceive of a state without the unit of the fam- 
ily, as it is to consider groups of families without 
something that we call a state. It is ludicrous to 
think of a strong and virile nation composed of 
one hundred million bachelors. We must go back 
to the feudal days of the middle ages to get a pic- 
ture of the family without a state. 

In other words, a man, to approach happiness, 
must have his family in support of which it is his 
privilege to take off his coat and work, and — if 
fate so decree — live; and he must have his coun- 
try's flag in honor of which it is his privilege to 
take off his hat, and — if need be — die. 
13 



Tlie Career of Leonard Wood 

Love and patriotism — these are the names of 
two of the sturdy beams of the house of civiliza- 
tion. 

These old familiar laws have been brought for- 
ward again by the outbreak of the Great War. 
There is a letter in existence written by a young 
soldier who volunteered at the start, a letter which 
he wrote to his unborn son as he sat in a front 
line trench in France. It tells the whole great 
truth in a line. It says : "My little son, I do not 
fully realize just why I am fighting here, but I 
know that one reason is to make sure that yow will 
not have to do it by and by." That lad was re- 
sponsible for a new family, and was the servant 
of his state — and he began liis approach to the 
great happiness when he thought of writing that 
letter. 

It will be well for us to remember these simple 
laws as we proceed. 

Fifty-eight years ago these laws and several 
more like them were just as true as they are now. 
Fifty-eight years hence they will still be true, as 
they will be five thousand eight hundred years 
hence. Fifty-eight years ago — to be exact, Octo- 
14 



The Subject 

ber 9, 1860 — there was bom up in New Hamp- 
shire a man child named Leonard Wood, in the 
town of Winchester, whence he was transferred 
at the age of three months to Massachusetts and 
finally at the age of eight years to Pocasset on 
Cape Cod. This man child is still alive at the 
time of writing, and during his fifty-eight years 
he has stood for these elemental truths in and out 
of boyhood, youth and manhood in such a fash- 
ion that his story — always interesting — becomes 
valuable at a time when, the Great War being 
over, many nations, to say nothing of many in- 
dividuals, are forgetting, in their admiration of 
f ^e new plaster and the wall paper, that the beams 
of the house of civilization are what hold it strong 
and sturdy as the ages proceed. 

This place. Cape Cod, where the formative years 
of Leonard Wood's life were passed, is a sand bank 
left by some melting glacier sticking out into the 
Atlantic in the shape of a doubled-up arm with a 
clenched fist as if it were ready at any moment 
to strike out and defend New England against 
any attack that might come from the eastward. 
Those who call it their native place have acquired 
16 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

something of its spirit. They have ever been 
ready to oppose any aggression from the east- 
wand or any other direction, and they have ever 
been ready to stand firmly upon the conviction 
that the integrity of the family and of the state 
must be maintained. And young Wood from 
them and from his Mayflower Pilgrim ancestors 
absorbed and was born with a common sense and 
a directness of vision that have appeared through- 
out his life under whatever conditions he found 
himself. 

There seems to have been nothing remark- 
able about him either in his boyhood or in his 
youth. He achieved nothing out of the ordinary 
through that whole period. But there has always 
been in him somewhere, the solid basis of sense and 
reason which kept him to whatever purpose he 
set himself to achieve along the lines of the great 
elemental truths of life and far away from vision- 
ary hallucinations of any sort. If it was Indian 
fighting, he worked away at the basis of the ques- 
tion and got ready and then carried out. If it 
was war, the same. If it was administration, he 
16 



The Subject 

studied the essentials, prepared for them, and then 
carried them out. 

Like all great achievements, it is simplicity it- 
self and can be told in words of one syllable. In 
all lines of his extraordinarily varied career ex- 
tending over all the comers of the globe he re- 
spected and built up authority of government and 
protected and encouraged the development of the 
family unit. One might say "Why not.'' Of 
course." The answer is "Who in this country in 
the last thirty years has done it to anything like 
the same extent?" 

Many minds during this time have advanced 
new ideas ; many men have invented amazing 
things ; many able people have opened up new ave- 
nues of thought and vision to the imagination of 
the world, sometimes to good and lasting purpose, 
sometimes otherwise. But who has taken what- 
ever problem was presented to him and invariably, 
no matter what quality was required, brought that 
problem to a successful conclusion without up- 
heaval, or chaos, or even much excitement for 
any one outside the immediately interested group.'' 

It is not genius; it is organization. It is not 
17 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

the flare of inventive ability ; it is the high vision 
of one whose code rested always on elemental, 
sound and enduring principles and who has not 
swerved from these to admire the plaster and the 
paper on the wall. It is finally the great quality 
that makes a man keep his feet on the ground and 
his heart amongst the bright stars. 

Of such stuff are the men of this world made 
whom people lean on, whom people naturally look 
to in emergency, who guide instinctively and un- 
erringly, carrying always the faith of those about 
them because they deal with sound things, ele- 
mental truths and sane methods — because they 
give mankind what Leonard Wood's greatest 
friend called "a square deal." 

It is difficult to treat much of his youth be- 
cause he is still living and the family life of any 
man is his own and not the public's business. But 
there is a certain interest attaching to his life- 
work for his country in knowing that his great- 
great-grandfather commanded a regiment in the 
Revolutionary army at Bunker Hill and that his 
father was a doctor who served in the Union army 
during the Civil War. Out of such heredity has 
18 



Tlie Subject 

come a doctor who is a Major General in the 
United States Army. 

At the same time his own life on Cape Cod out- 
side of school at the Middleboro Academy was 
marked by what might distinguish any youngster 
of that day and place — a strong liking for small 
boating, for games out of doors, for riding, shoot- 
ing and fishing. These came from a fine healthy 
body which to this day at his present age is amaz- 
ing in its capacity to carry him through physi- 
cal work. He can to-day ride a hundred miles 
at a stretch and walk thirty miles in any twenty- 
four hours. 

Later in life this was one of the many points 
of common interest that drew him and Theodore 
Roosevelt so closely together. It has no particu- 
lar significance other than to make it possible for 
him in many lands at many different ^imes to do 
that one great tiling which makes men leaders — 
to show his men the way, to do himself whatever 
he asked others to do, never to give an order 
whether to a military, sanitary, medical or ad- 
ministrative force that he could not and did not 
do himself in so far as one man could do it. 
19 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

There was little or no money in the Wood fam- 
ily and the young man had to plan early to look 
out for himself. He wanted to go to sea — prob- 
ably because he lived on Cape Cod and came from 
a long line of New Englanders. He wanted to 
go into the Navy. He even planned to join an 
Arctic expedition at the age of twenty and be- 
gan to collect material for his outfit. But finally, 
following his father's lead, he settled upon the 
study of medicine. 

This led to the Harvard University Medical 
School and to his graduation in 1884. There 
then followed the regular internship of a young 
physician and the beginning of practice in Bos- 
ton. 

Then came the change that separated Wood 
from the usual lot of well educated, well prepared 
doctors who come out of a fine medical school and 
begin their lifework of following their profession 
and building up a practice, a record, a family and 
the history which is the highest ideal man can 
have and the collective result of which is a sound 
nation. 

Wood wanted action. He wanted to do some- 
20 



The Subject 

thing. He had a strong inclination to the out-of- 
doors. And it is probably this, together with his 
inheritance and the chances of the moment, that 
led him to enter the army as a surgeon. As there 
was no immediate vacancy in the medical corps he 
took the job of contract surgeon at a salary of 
$100 a month and was first ordered to duty at 
Fort Warren in Boston Harbor where he stayed 
only a few days. His request for "action" was 
granted in June, 1885, and he was ordered to Ari- 
zona to report to General Crook on the Mexican 
border near Fort Huachuca. 

And here begins the career of Leonard Wood. 



THE INDIAN FIGHTER 



II 

THE INDIAN FIGHTER 

The problem was what turned out to be the last 
of the Indian fighting, involving a long-drawn-out 
campaign. For over a hundred years, as every 
one knows, the unequal struggle of two races for 
this continent had been in progress and the his- 
tory of it is the ever tragic stcry of the survival 
of the fittest. No one can read it without regret 
at the destruction, the extermination, of a race. 
No one, however, can for a moment hesitate in his 
judgment of the inevitableness of it, since it is 
and always will be the truth that the man or the 
race or the nation which cannot keep up with the 
times must go under — and should go under. Edu- 
cation, brains, genius, organization, ability, imagi- 
nation, vision — whatever it may be called or by 
how many names — ^will forever destroy and push 
out ignorance, incompetence, stupidity. 

The Indians were not able — tragic as the truth 
25 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

is — to move onward, and so they had to move out 
and give place to the more worthy tenant. 

The end of this century of struggle was the 
campaign against the Apaches in the Southwest 
along the Mexican border, where they made their 
last stand under their able leader Geronimo. 

The young doctor was detailed at once for duty 
on a broiling fourth of July under Captain — 
afterwards General — Henry W. Lawton, and the 
next day he rode a horse over thirty-five miles. 
That incident to the initiated is noteworthy, but 
even more so is the fact that shortly afterwards 
in a hard drive of five succeeding days he averaged 
eighteen hours a day either in the saddle or on 
foot, leading the horses. It was a stiff test. To 
make it worse he was given the one unassigned 
horse — that is to say, a horse that was known as 
an "outlaw" — whose jerky gait made each saddle- 
sore complain at every step. The sun beat down 
fiercely; but, burned and blistered fore and aft, 
Leonard Wood could still smile and ask for more 
action. 

The stoicism of the tenderfoot who had come 
to play their game was not lost on the troopers 
26 



The Indian Fighter 



with whom he was to spend the next two years 
fighting Indians. He "healed in the saddle" at 
once and a few weeks later was out-riding and 
out-marching the best of Captain Lawton's com- 
mand, all of whom were old and experienced Indian 
fighters. 

This was not to be the last time that Leonard 
Wood was to find himself faced at the outset by 
tacit suspicion and lack of confidence on the part 
of the men he was to command. Years later in 
the Philippines he was put up against a similar 
hostility, with responsibilities a thousandfold more 
grave, and in the same dogged way he won con- 
fidence — unquestioning loyalty — by proving that 
he was better than the best. "Do it and don't 
talk about it," was his formula for success. It 
was this quality in him that made it possible for 
Captain Lawton to write to General Nelson A. 
Miles, who had then succeeded General Crook, 
after the successful Geronimo campaign: "... 
I can only repeat that I have before reported 
officially and what I have said to you: that his 
services during the trying campaign were of the 
highest order. I speak particularly of services 
27 



Tlie Career of Leonard Wood 

other than those devolving upon him as a medical 
officer; services as a combatant or line officer vol- 
untarily performed. He sought the most difficult 
work, and by his determination and courage ren- 
dered a successful issue of the campaign possible." 

General Crook, who commanded the troops 
along the border, characterized the Apaches as 
"tigers of the human race." Tigers they were, 
led by Geronimo, the man whose name became a 
by-word for savagery and cruelty. For a time 
these Indians had remained subdued and quiet upon 
a reservation, and there can be no question but 
what the subsequent outbreaks that led to the long 
campaign in which Wood took part were due 
largely to the lack of judgment displayed by the 
officials in whose charge they were placed. Both 
the American settlers and the Mexicans opposed 
the location of the Indians on the San Carlos 
reservation and lost no opportunity to show their 
hostility. When General Crook took command of 
that district he found he had to deal with a mean, 
sullen and treacherous band of savages. 

The American forces were constantly embroiled 
with the Chiricahuas. Treaties and agreements 
28 



The Indian Fighter 



were made only to be broken whenever blood lust 
or "tiswin" — a strong drink made from corn — 
moved the tribe to the warpath and fresh depre- 
dations. Due to General Crook's tireless efforts 
there were several occasions when the Indians re- 
mained quietly on their reservation, but it was 
only a matter of months at the best before one of 
the tribes, usually the Chiricahuas, would break 
forth again. Not until the treaty of 1882 with 
Mexico was it possible for our troops to pursue 
them into the Mexican mountains where they took 
refuge after each uprising. In 1883 General 
Crook made an expedition into Mexico which re- 
sulted in the return of the Chiricahuas and the 
Warm Springs tribes under Geronimo and Natchez 
to the Apache reservation. 

Two years of comparative quiet followed. The 
Indians followed agricultural pursuits and the 
settlers, who had come to establish themselves on 
ranches along the border, went out to their plow- 
ing and fence building unarmed. In May, 1885, 
thelndians indulged in an extensive and prolonged 
"tiswin" drunk. The savagery that lurked in 
their hearts broke loose and they escaped from 

S9 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

their reservation in small bands, leaving smoking 
trails of murder, arson and pillage behind them. 
Acts of ugly violence followed. General Crook 
threatened to kill the last one of them, if it took 
fifty years, and at one moment it seemed as though 
he had them under control. "Tiswin" once again 
set them loose and they stampeded. 

Their daring and illusiveness kept the Ameri- 
can and Mexican troops constantly in action. 
One band of eleven Indians crossed into the 
United States, raided an Apache reservation, 
killed Indians as well as thirty-eight whites, cap- 
tured two hundred head of stock and returned to 
Mexico after having traveled four weeks and cov- 
ered over 1,200 miles. 

It was into such warfare that Wood was 
plunged. No sooner had he arrived and begun 
his work than he put in a request for line duty 
in addition to his duties as a medical officer. This 
was granted immediately, because the need of 
men who could do something was too great to 
admit of much punctiliousness in the matter of 
military custom. Before the arrival of his com- 
mission as Assistant Surgeon, January, 1886, he 
30 



The Indian Fighter 



had served as commanding officer of infantry in 
a desperately hard pursuit in the Sierra Madres, 
ending in an attack on an Indian camp. He was 
repeatedly assigned to the most strenuous, fa- 
tiguing duty. After having marched on foot one 
day twenty-five miles with Indian scouts he rode 
seventy-three miles with a message at night, com- 
ing back at dawn the next day, just in time 
to break camp and march thirty-four miles to a 
new camp. He was given at his own request com- 
mand of infantry under Captain Lawton, and 
this assignment to line duty was sanctioned by 
General Miles, who had recently taken over the 
command of the troops along the border. 

General Miles was one of the greatest Indian 
fighters the country has ever known. He was 
peculiarly fitted to assume this new job of sup- 
pressing the Apache. He judged and selected 
the men who were to be a part of this campaign 
by his own well-established standards. As its 
leader he selected Captain Lawton, then serving 
with the Fourth United States Cavalry at Fort 
Huachuca, primarily because Captain Lawton 
believed that these Indians could be subjugated. 
31 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

He had met their skill and cunning and physical 
strength through years of such warfare under 
General Crook, and possessed the necessary quali- 
fications to meet the demands of the trying cam- 
paign that faced him. After speaking of Captain 
Lawton, General Miles says in his published recol- 
lections : 

"I also found at Fort Huachuca another splen- 
did type of American manhood, Captain Leonard 
Wood, Assistant Surgeon, United States Army. 
He was a young officer, age twenty-four, a native 
of Massachusetts, a graduate of Harvard, a fair- 
haired, blue-eyed young man of great intelligence, 
sterling, manly qualities and resolute spirit. He 
was also perhaps as fine a specimen of physical 
strength and endurance as could easily be found." 

". . . His services and observations and exam- 
ple were most commendable and valuable, and 
added much to the physical success of the enter- 
prise." 

General Field Orders No. 7, issued April 20, 
1886, by General Miles for the guidance of the 
troops in his command, tell clearly and concisely 
the character and demands of the time. 
S2 



The Indian Fighter 



"The chief object of the troops will be to cap- 
ture or destroy any band of hostile Apache In- 
dians found In this section of the country, and to 
this end the most vigorous and persistent efforts 
will be required of all officers and soldiers until 
this object is accomplished. 

". . . The cavalry will be used in light scouting 
parties with a sufficient force held in readiness at 
all times to make the most persistent and effective 
pursuit. 

"To avoid any advantage the Indians may have 
by a relay of horses, where a troop or squadron 
commander is near the hostile Indians, he will be 
justified in dismounting one half of his command 
and selecting the lightest and best riders to make 
pursuit by the most vigorous forced marches until 
the strength of all the animals of his command 
shall have been exhausted. 

"In this way a command should, under a judi- 
cious leader, capture a band of Indians or drive 
them from 150 to 200 miles in forty-eight hours 
through a country favorable for cavalry move- 
ments ; and the horses of the troops will be trained 
for this purpose." 

33 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

To get a picture of young Wood at this time 
it is necessary to look at the situation through 
the eyes of that day and through the eyes of 
,youth as well. 

A young man of twenty-four had been brought 
up by the sea in what we will call for the sake of 
politeness conservative New England. He had all 
the sound and sane basis of character that comes 
from what in this country was an old and estab- 
lished civilization. He had been educated in his 
profession at the most academic and conservative 
institution ;n the United States ; a profession 
which while not an exact science is nevertheless a 
science requiring sane methods and the elimination 
of risks. He had begun the regular work of this 
profession. He possessed also what every young 
man with a healthy body of that day possessed — 
and still possesses — a passion for romance, for 
the road, for the great adventure which at that 
time in this country still centered around the 
pistol shooting, broncho riding, Indian fighting 
cowboy. 

We who are old have forgotten) the paper 
^covered stories we used to read surreptitiously 



The Indian Fighter 



about the "Broncho Buster's Revenge," or "The 
Three-Fingered Might of the West." But we 
did read them and long for the great hfe of the 
plains. Even Jesse James was a hero to many 
of us. 

But for a New Englander educated at Harvard 
to the practice of medicine to pick up his deeply 
driven stakes and actually go into this realm of 
romance was unusual in the extreme ; and to be so 
well trained and in such good condition, with such 
high courage as to make good at once amongst 
those men who looked down on an Eastern tender- 
foot was sufficiently rare to promise much for the 
future. 

The young man had the love of romance that 
all young lives have, but he had the unusual stim- 
ulus to it that led him to make it for the moment 
his actual life. And those who study his whole 
life will find again and again that when the part- 
ing of the ways came he invariably took the road 
of adventure, provided that it was always in the 
service of his country. Such then was the make- 
up and the condition of this young man when in 
the spring of 1886 Captain Lawton, having re- 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

ceived orders to assume command of the expedi- 
tion into Mexico against the hostile Apache, 
included Wood as one of his four officers. The 
force consisted of forty-five troopers, twenty In- 
dian scouts, thirty infantrymen and two pack 
trains. And thus began the two-thousand-mile 
chase into the fastnesses of Sonora and Chihuahua 
which ended with the surrender of Geronimo. 

General Miles' campaign methods differed from 
those of General Crook in many ways. He always 
assumed the aggressive. His motto was, "Follow 
the Indian wherever he goes and strike him when- 
ever you can. No matter how bad the country, 
go on." Under these instructions the troops went 
over the border and down into the depths of the 
Sonora, jumping the Indian whenever an oppor- 
tunity offered, never giving him any rest. Wher- 
ever he went the troops followed. If he struck 
the border, a well arranged system of heliostat 
stations passed the word along to a body of wait- 
ing or passing scouts. General Miles' methods 
differed from those of General Crook also in the 
matter of the use of the heliostat, a system of 
signaling based on flashes of the sun's rays from 



The Indian Fighter 



mirrors. He had used them experimentally while 
stationed in the Department of the Columbia, and 
now determined to make them of practical use at 
his new station. Over the vast tracts of rough, 
unpopulated land of Arizona and Mexico the sig- 
nals flashed, keeping different detachments in 
touch with their immediate commands, and the 
campaign headquarters in touch with its base. 

Even before Captain Lawton's command could 
be made ready the Indians themselves precipitated 
the fight. Instead of remaining in the Sierra 
Madres, where they were reasonably safe from 
assault, they commenced a campaign of violence 
south of the boundary. This gave both the 
American troops and the Mexicans who were op- 
erating in conjunction with them exact knowledge 
of their whereabouts. On the 27th of April they 
came northward, invading the United States. In- 
numerable outrages were committed by them 
which are now part of the history of that heart- 
breaking campaign. One, for example, typical 
of the rest was the case of the Peck family. Their 
ranch was surrounded, the family captured and a 
number of the ranch hands killed. The husband 

37 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

was tied and compelled to witness the tortures to 
which his wife was submitted. His daughter, thir- 
teen years old, was abducted by the band and 
carried nearly three hundred miles. In the mean- 
time Captain Lawton's command with Wood in 
charge of the Apache scouts was pursuing them 
hotly. A short engagement between the Mexican 
troops and the Indians followed. On the heels 
of this the American troops came up and the little 
Peck girl was recaptured. Nightfall, however, 
prevented any decisive engagement, and before 
daybreak the Indians had slipped away. 

The Indians found it better to divide into two 
bands, one under Natchez, which turned to the 
north, and the other under Garonimo, which went 
to the west. The first band was intercepted by 
Lieutenant Brett of the Second Cavalry after a 
heartbreaking pursuit. At one time the pursuing 
party was on the trail for twenty-six hours with- 
out a halt, and eighteeen hours without water. 
The men suffered so intensely from thirst that 
many of them opened their veins to moisten their 
lips with their own blood. But the Indians suf- 
fered far more. In Geronimo's story of those 
38 



The Indian Fighter 



days, published many years later, he wrote; "We 
killed cattle to eat whenever we were in need of 
food, but we frequently suffered greatly for need 
of water. At one time we had no water for two 
days and nights, and our horses almost died of 
thirst." Finally on the evening of June 6th the 
cavalry came into contact with Geronimo's band 
and the Indians were scattered. 

For four months Captain Lawton and Leonard 
Wood pursued the savages over mountain ranges 
and through the canyons. During this time the 
troops marched 1,396 miles. The conditions under 
which they worked were cruel. The intense heat, 
the lack of water, and the desperately rough coun- 
try covered with mountains and cactus hindered 
the command, but the men had the consolation of 
knowing that the Indians were in worse plight. 
Furthermore, the trustworthiness of the Indian 
scouts, a tattered, picturesque band of renegades, 
was coming under suspicion. Perhaps it was be- 
cause of their unreliability that an attack made 
upon the 13th of July was not an entire success. 
,The Indians escaped, but their most valued pos- 
39 



Tlie Career of Leonard Wood 

sessions, food and horses, fell into the hands of 
our troopers. 

It was the beginning of the end. A month later 
they received word that the Indians were working 
towards Santa Teresa, and Captain Lawton moved 
forward to head them off. Leonard Wood's per- 
sonal account of this engagement follows: 

"On the 13th of July we effected the surprise 
of the camp of Geronimo and Natchez which 
eventually led to their surrender and resulted in 
the immediate capture of everything in their 
camps except themselves and the clothes they 
wore. It was our practice to keep two scouts two 
or three days in advance of the command, and 
between them and the main body four or five 
other scouts. The Indian scouts in advance 
would locate the camp of the hostiles and send 
back word to the next party, who in their turn 
would notify the main command; then a forced 
march would be made in order to surround and 
surprise the camp. On the day mentioned, fol- 
lowing this method of procedure, we located the 
Indians on the Yaqui River in a section of the 
country almost impassable for man or beast and 
40 



The Indian Fighter 



in a position which the Indians evidently felt to 
be perfectly secure. The small tableland on 
which the camp was located bordered on the Yaqui 
River and was surrounded on all sides by high 
cliffs with practically only two points of entrance, 
one up the river and the other down. The officers 
were able to creep up and look down on the Indian 
camp which was about two thousand feet below 
their point of observation. All the fires were 
burning, the horses were grazing and the Indians 
were in the river swimming with evidently not the 
slightest apprehension of attack. Our plan was 
to send scouts to close the upper opening and 
then to send the infantry, of which I had the 
command, to attack the camp from below. 

"Both the Indians and the infantry were in 
position and advanced on the hostile camp, which, 
situated as it was on this tableland covered with 
canebrake and boulders, formed an ideal position 
for Indian defense. As the infantry moved for- 
ward the firing of the scouts was heard, which led 
us to believe that the fight was on, and great, ac- 
cordingly, was our disgust to find, on our arrival, 
that the firing was accounted for by the fact that 
41 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

the scouts were killing the stock, the Apaches 
themselves having escaped through the northern 
exit just a few minutes before their arrival. It 
was a very narrow escape for the Indians, and was 
due to mere accident. One of their number, who 
had been out hunting, discovered the red headband 
of one of our scouts as he was crawling around 
into position. He immediately dropped his game 
and notified the Apaches, and they were able to 
get away just before the scouts closed up the exit. 
Some of these Indians were suffering from old 
wounds. Natchez himself was among this number, 
and their sufferings through the pursuit which 
followed led to their discouragement and, finally, 
to their surrender." 

The persistent action of our troops was begin- 
ning to have its effect, and when the Indians ceased 
to commit depredations it was good evidence to 
those who knew Indians and Indian nature that 
they were beginning to think of surrender. 

One night the troops ran into a Mexican pack- 
train, which brought the first reports that Indians 
were near Fronteras, a little village in Sonora. 
Two of their women had come into town to find the 
42 



The Indian Fighter 



wife of an old Mexican who was with the Ameri- 
cans as a guide, hoping, through her, to open up 
communications looking to a surrender. As soon 
as the report was received Captain Lawton sent 
Lieutenant Gatewood of the Sixth Cavalry, who 
had joined the command, with two friendly 
Apaches of the same tribe as those who were out 
on the warpath, to go ahead and send his men into 
the hostile camp and demand their surrender. 
This he eventually succeeded in doing, but the 
Indians refused to surrender, saying that they 
would talk only with Lawton, or, as they expressed 
it, "the officer who had followed them all sum- 
mer." This eventually led to communication be- 
ing opened and one morning at daybreak Geroni- 
mo, Natchez and twelve other Indians appeared 
in camp. Their inclinations seemed at least to be 
peaceful enough to allow the entire body of Indians 
to come down and camp within two miles of the 
Americans. It was agreed that they should meet 
General Miles and formally surrender to him and 
that the Indians and the troops should move 
further north to a more convenient meeting place. 
To give confidence to the Indians in this new state 
43 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

of affairs, Captain Lawton, Leonard Wood and 
two other officers agreed to travel with them. Due 
to a mistake in orders, the American troopers 
started off in the wrong direction, and Captain 
Lawton was obliged to leave in search of them. 
This left the three remaining officers practically 
as hostages in the Indian camp. Speaking of this 
incident. General Wood says : 

"Instead of taking advantage of our position, 
they assured us that while we were in their camp 
it was our camp, and that as we had never lied to 
them they were going to keep faith with us. They 
gave us the best they had to eat and treated us 
as well as we could wish in every way. Just 
before giving us these assurances, Geronimo came 
to me and asked to see my rifle. It was a Hotch- 
kiss and he had never seen its mechanism. When 
he asked me for the gun and some ammunition, I 
must confess I felt a little nervous, for I thought 
it might be a device to get hold of one of our 
weapons. I made no objection, however, but let 
him have it, showed him how to use it, and he 
fired at a mark, just missing one of his own men, 
which he regarded as a great joke, rolling on the 



The Indian Fighter 



ground, laughing heartily and saying 'good gun.' 

"Late the next afternoon we came up with our 
command, and we then proceeded toward the 
boundary line. The Indians were very watchful, 
and when we came near any of our troops we 
found the Indians were always aware of their 
presence before we knew of it ourselves.'* 

For eleven days Captain Lawton's command 
moved north, with Geronimo's and Natchez's 
camps moving in a parallel course. During these 
last days of Geronimo's leadership his greatest 
concern was for the welfare of his people. The 
most urgent request that he had to make of Cap- 
tain Lawton was to ask repeatedly for the assur- 
ance that his people would not be murdered. 

Captain Lawton in his official report says of 
Wood's work in the campaign : 

"No officer of infantry having been sent with 
the detachment . . . Assistant Surgeon Wood 
was, at his own request, given command of the in- 
fantry. The work during June having been done 
by the cavalry, they were too much exhausted 
to be used again without rest, and they were left 
in camp at Oposura to recuperate. 

45 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

"During this short campaign, the suffering was 
intense. The country was indescribably rough 
and the weather swelteringly hot, with heavy rains 
for day or night. The endurance of the men was 
tried to the utmost limit. Diasabihties resulting 
from excessive fatigue reduced the infantry to 
fourteen men, and as they were worn out and 
without shoes when the new supplies reached me 
July 29th, they were returned to the supply camp 
for rest, and the cavalry under Lieutenant A. L. 
Smith, who had just joined his troop, continued 
the campaign. Heavy rains having set in, the 
trail of the hostiles, who were all on foot, was 
entirely obliterated. 

"I desire particularly to invite the attention of 
the Department Commander to Assistant Surgeon 
Leonard Wood, the only officer who has been with 
me through the whole campaign. His courage, 
energy and loyal support during the whole time; 
his encouraging example to the command when 
work was the hardest and prospects darkest; his 
thorough confidence and belief in the final successes 
of the expedition, and his untiring efforts to make 
46 



The Indian Fighter 



it so, have placed me under obligations so great 
that I cannot even express them." 

Through the formal language of a military 
report crops out the respect of a commanding 
officer who knew whereof he spoke, the acknowl- 
€dgment that here was a young subordinate who 
never despaired, never gave up, who always did 
liis part and more than his part, and who placed 
his commanding officer under obligations which he 
was unable "even to express." That was a great 
deal for any young man to secure. To-day, after 
the Great War, there are many such extracts from 
official reports and all are unquestionably de- 
sorved. But they are the result of a nation 
awakened to patriotism when all went in together. 
In 1886, when the nation was at peace, when com- 
mercial pursuits were calling all young men to 
make their fortune, young Leonard Wood an- 
swered a much less universal call to do his work 
in a fight that had none of the flare or glory of 
the front line trench in Flanders. 

Out of it all came to him at a very early age 
practice in handling men in rough country in 
rough times — men who were not puppets even 

47 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

though they were regular army privates. They 
had to be handled at times with an iron hand, at 
times with the softest of gloves ; and an officer to 
gain their confidence and respect had to show 
them that he could beat them at their own game 
and be one of them — and still command. 

The Congressional Medal of Honor awarded 
him years later for this Indian work is a fair re- 
turn of what he accomplished, for this Medal of 
Honor, the then only prize for personal bravery 
and high fighting qualities which his country could 
give him, has always been the rare and much 
coveted award of army men. 

It was in Wood's case the mark of conspicuous 
fighting qualities, conspicuous bravery and marked 
attention to duty — a sign of success of a high 
order for a New England doctor of twenty-five. 



THE OFFICIAL' 



Ill 

THE official; 

Chance no doubt at times plays an important 
part in the making of a man. Yet perhaps Cas- 
sius' remark, through the medium of Shakespeare, 
that "The fault is not in our stars but in our- 
selves that we are underlings," has the truer ring. 
Chance no doubt comes to all of us again and 
again, but it is the brain that takes the chance 
which deserves the credit and not the accidental 
event, opportunity or occasion offering. 

It was not chance that sent Leonard Wood to 
Arizona to fight Indians. It was the result of long 
hours of meditation in Boston when, as a young 
doctor, he decided finally to leave the usual routine 
of a physician's career and strike out in another 
and less main-travelsd road. There was notliing 
of luck or chance in this decision, the carrying out 
of which taught him something that he used later 
to the advantage of himself and his country. 

Out of the Indian experiences came to him in 
51 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

the most vigorous possible way through actual 
observation the necessity for bodily health. No 
man could ride or walk day in and day out across 
waterless deserts and keep his courage and deter- 
mination, to say nothing of his good common 
sense, without being in the best of physical condi- 
tion. No man could get up in the morning after 
a terrific night's march, and collect his men and 
cheer and encourage them unless he was abso- 
lutely fit and in better condition than they. 

He learned, too, that all matters of outfit, care 
of person, of equipment, of horses required the 
most constant attention day by day, hour by 
hour. He had to deal with an enemy who be- 
longed to this country, who knew and was accus- 
tomed to its chmatic conditions as well as its 
topography, and he had to beat him at his own 
game, or fail. 

He learned that preparation, while it should 
never delay action, can never be overdone. This 
must have been drilled into the young man by 
the hardest and most grueling experiences, be- 
cause it has been one of the gospels of his creed 
52 



The Official 



since that time and is to this day his text upon 
all occasions. 

He learned, too, something deeper than even 
these basic essentials of the fighting creed. He 
developed what has always been a part of him- 
self — the conviction that authority is to be re- 
spected, that allegiance to superior officers and 
government is the first essential of success, that 
organization is the basis of smoothly running 
machinery of any kind, and that any weakening 
of these principles is the sign of decay, of failure, 
and of disintegration. 

He learned that a few men, well trained, thor- 
oughly organized, fit and ready, can beat a host 
of individualists though each of the latter may 
excel in ability any of the former, and there is in 
this connection a curiously interesting significance 
in the man's passionate fondness throughout his 
whole life for the game of football. At Middle- 
boro, in California, in service in the South and 
in Washington, he was at every opportunity play- 
ing football, because in addition to its physical 
qualities, this game above all others depends for 
53 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

its success upon organization, preparation and 
what is called "team play." 

Through these early days it is to be noted, 
therefore, as a help in understanding his great 
work for liis country which came later that his 
sense of the value of organization grew constantly 
stronger and stronger along with a soHd belief in 
the necessity for subordination to his superior 
officers and through them to his state and his flag. 
The respect which he acquired for the agile In- 
dians went hand in hand with the knowledge that 
in the end they could not fail to be captured and 
defeated, because they had neither the sense of 
organization, nor the intelligence to accept and 
respect authority which not only would have given 
them success, but would in reality have made the 
whole campaign unnecessary, had the Indian mind 
been able to conceive them in their true light and 
the Indian character been willing to observe their 
never-changing laws. 

The result, however, was that the spirit of the 
Indians was broken by the white man's relentless 
determination. 

The hostile Apaches were finally disposed of by 
54 



The Official 

sending them out of the territory. They were 
treated as prisoners of war and the guarantees 
that General Miles had given them as conditions 
of surrender were respected by the Government, 
although there was a great feeling in favor of 
making them pay the full penalty for their out- 
rages. President Grover Cleveland expressed him- 
self as hoping that "nothing will be done with 
Geronimo which will prevent our treating him as 
a prisoner of war, if we cannot hang him, which 
I would much prefer." 

At the end of the campaign General Miles set 
about reorganizing his command. For several 
months Wood was engaged in practice maneuvers. 
The General wished to expand his heliographic 
system of signaling, and to that end commenced 
an extensive survey of the vast unpopulated tracts 
of Arizona, which his troops might have to cover 
in time of action. Wood was one of the General's 
chief assistants in this survey, and in 1889, when 
he was ordered away, he probably knew as much 
of Arizona and the southwestern life as any man 
ever stationed there. 

The orders which took him from the border 
55 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

country made him one of the staff surgeons at 
Headquarters in Los Angeles. This post promised 
to be inactive and uninteresting but Captain 
Wood managed to distinguish himself in two re- 
spects, first as a surgeon and second as an athlete. 
This period of his life varied from month to month 
in some instances, but in the main it was the usual 
existence of an army official in the capacity of 
military surgeon. It extended over a period of 
eleven years, from 1887 to 1898. These were the 
eleven years between the ages of twenty-seven and 
thirtv-seven — very critical years in the existence 
of a man. It was during these years that he met 
Miss Louise A. Condit Smith, a niece of Chief 
Justice Field, who afterwards became his wife and 
began with him a singularly simple and homelike 
family life that is the second of his vital interests 
in this world. He has never allowed his family 
life to interfere with his service to his country. 
And, paradoxical as it may seem, he has never 
allowed his lifework for his state to interfere with 
the happy and even tenor of his home existence. 
Children came in due course and the family unit 
became complete — that quiet, straightforward 
56 



Tlie Official 

existence of the family which is the characteristic 
of American life to-day, as it is of any other 
well-organized civilized nation. 

In the practice of his profession he was able to 
do a lasting service to his commanding officer. 
General Miles suffered a grave accident to his leg 
when a horse fell upon it. It was the opinion of 
the surgeon who attended him that amputation 
would be necessary. But the General was of no 
mind to beat a one-legged retreat in the midst of 
a highly interesting and successful career. Cap- 
tain Wood had inspired confid^ince in him as an 
Indian fighter — a confidence so strong that he 
thought it might not be misplaced if it became 
confidence in him as a doctor — and so Wood was 
summoned. 

*'They say they will have to cut off tliis leg, but 
fhey are not going to do it," said the General. "I 
am going to leave it up to you. You'll have to 
save it." 

A few weeeks later General Miles was up and 
about, and under his young surgeon's care the 
wound healed and the leg was saved. 

While stationed at Los Angeles headquarters, 
57 



TJw Career of Leonard Wood 

Wood found liimself with enough time for much 
hard sport. It was a satisfying kind of life 
after the strenuous months of border service. 

In 1888 he was ordered back to the border 
where he served with the 10th Cavalry in the 
Apache Kid outbreak. After a few months of 
active service, he was ordered to Fort McDowell 
and then, in 1889, to California again. 

From Cahfornia he was ordered to Fort 
McPherson, near Atlanta, Georgia, where he again 
distinguished himself at football. He trained the 
first team in the Georgia Institute of Technology, 
became its Captain and during the two years of 
his Captaincy lost but one game and defeated the 
champion team of the University of Georgia. 

An incident has been told by his fellow players 
at Fort McPherson which shows exceedingly well 
a certain Spartan side to Wood's nature. One 
afternoon at a football game he received a deep 
cut over one eye. He returned to his office after 
the game and, after coolly sterilizing his instru- 
ment and washing the wound, stood before a 
mirror and calmly took four stitches in his eyelid. 

Such were the characteristics, such the expe- 
58 



The Official 



rience, of the young man when in 1895 he was 
ordered to Washington — that morgue of the 
government official — to become Assistant Attend- 
ing Surgeon. The holder of this position often 
shares with the Navy Surgeons the responsibility 
of medical attention to the President, and in ad- 
dition he acts as medical adviser to army officers 
and their families and is the official physician to 
the Secretary of War. 

It was not an office that appealed to Captain 
Wood. It could not; since he was a man essen- 
tially of out-of-doors, of action and of administra- 
tion. Yet he seems to have made such a success 
of the work that he became the personal friend of 
both Cleveland and McKinley. His relations with 
President Cleveland were of the most intimate 
sort, resulting from mutual respect and liking as 
well as a mutual understanding on the part of 
both men of the other's good qualities. He saw 
him in the White House at all hours of the day 
and night ; saw him with his family and his children 
about him ; noted their fondness for their father 
and his devotion to them. It was a quality so 
marked in Lincoln, so strong in most great men 
59 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

of the sound, calm, fearless, administrative sort. 
Wood himself has exhibited the same quality in 
his own family. And in those days the perfect 
understanding of the father and his children, the 
simple family life that went on in the splendid 
old house in Washington which combined the 
dignity of a State and the simplicity of a home 
unequaled by any great ruler's house upon this 
earth — all tended to bring out this native quality 
in the President's medical adviser. 

It was at the conclusion of Cleveland's second 
term that Wood was assigned to this position. 
On one of the President's trips for recreation and 
rest — a shooting expedition on the inland waters 
near Cape Hatteras — he was one of the party 
which included also Admiral Evans and Captain 
Lamberton. The hours spent in shooting boxes or 
in the evenings in the cabin of the lighthouse 
tender gave opportunity for him to study Cleve- 
land off duty when the latter liked to sit quietly 
and talk of his early life, of his political battles, 
of fishing, shooting, and of the urgent questions 
which beset him as President. And Wood brought 
away with him a profound respect for the combi- 
60 



The Official 



nation of simplicity and unswerving love and de- 
votion to his country, coupled with rugged un- 
compromising honesty which seem to have been 
the characteristics of Grover Cleveland. 

This particular trip was immediately after the 
inauguration ceremonies of President McKinley, 
and Cleveland was not only tired from the neces- 
sary part which he himself had taken in them, but 
also from the first natural let-down after four 
years of duty in the White House. Wood has 
given a little sketch of the man: 

"I remember very well his words, as he sat 
down with a sigh of relief, glad that it was all 
over. He said: 'I have had a long talk with 
President McKinley. He is an honest, sincere and 
serious man. I feel that he is going to do his best 
to give the country a good administration. He 
impressed me as a man who will have the best 
interests of the people at heart.' 

"Then he stopped, and said with a sigh: 'I 
envy him to-day only one thing and that was the 
presence of his own mother at his inauguration. 
I would have given anything in the world if my 
mother could have been at my inauguration,' 
61 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

and then, continuing: 'I wish him well. He has 
a hard task/ and after a long pause: 'But he is 
a good man and will do his best.' " 

He has spoken often, too, of Cleveland's love of 
sport, of the days which Jefferson, the actor, and 
Cleveland spent together fishing and shooting on 
and near Buzzard's Bay — the same spot where 
he himself as a boy spent liis days in like occupa- 
tions. The sides of Cleveland's character that 
appealed to him were the frankness with which he 
expressed his views on the important questions of 
the day, the sterling worth and high ideals which 
emphasized his sense of duty, his love of country 
and his desire to do the best possible for his fellow 
citizens, coupled with his perfectly unaffected 
family feelings and the amazing devotion and 
affection which he invariably elicited from all 
those who came into association with him, even 
to the most humble hand on the liglit house 
tender. Jeffersonian simplicity could have gone 
no further, nor could any man have been more 
definite, far-sighted and fearless than was Cleve- 
land in his* Venezuelan Message. These two ex- 
tremes made a vivid and lasting impresssion upon 
62 



The Official 



the young man, because both sides struck a sym- 
pathetic chord in his own nature. 

There followed, then, the same association with 
McKinley, growing out of the necessary intimacy 
of physician and patient. But in this latter case 
two events, vital to this country as well as to the 
career of Leonard Wood, changed the quiet course 
of Washington official hfe to a life of intense 
interest and great activity. 

These two events were Wood's meeting with 
Theodore Roosevelt and the Spanish War. 

One night in 1896 at some social function at 
the Lowndes house Wood was introduced to Roose- 
velt, then assistant Secrc' ry of the Navy. It 
seems strange that two men so vitally alike in 
many ways, who were in college at about the same 
time, should never have met before. But when 
they did meet the friendship, which lasted without 
a break until Roosevelt's death, began at once. 

That night the two men walked home together 
and in a few days they were hard at it, walking, 
riding, playing games and discussing the affairs 
of the day. 

This strange fact of extraordinary similarities 
63 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

and vivid differences in the two men doubtless 
had much to do with bringing them together and 
keeping them allied for years. Both were essen- 
tially men of physical action, both born fighters, 
both filled with an amazing patriotism and both 
simple family men. 

On the one hand, Roosevelt was a great indi- 
vidualist. He did things himself. He no sooner 
thought of a thing than he carried it out himself. 
When he was President he frequently issued 
orders to subordinates in the departments without 
consulting the heads of the departments. Wood, 
on the other hand, is distinctly an organizer and 
administrator. Whexi he later filled high official 
positions, he invariably picked men to attend to 
certain work and left them, with constant consul- 
tation, to do the jobs whatever they were. If a 
road was to be built, he found the best road builder 
and laid out the work for him leaving to him the 
carrying out of the details. 

Yet again both men had known life in the West, 
Roosevelt as a cowboy and Wood as an Indian 
fighter. Both had come from the best old Ameri- 
can stock, Roosevelt from the Dutch of Manhat- 
64 



The Official 



tan and Wood from New England. Thej were 
Harvard men and lovers of the outdoor, strenuous 
life. Their ideals and aspirations had much in 
common and they were both actuated by the in- 
tense feeling of nationalism that brought them to 
the foreground in American life. 

Soon they were tramping through the country 
together testing each other's endurance in good- 
natured rivalry. When out of sight of officialdom, 
they ran foot races together, jumped fences and 
ran cross-country. Both men had children and 
with these they played Indians, indulging in most 
exciting chases and games. They explored the 
ravines and woods all about Washington, some- 
times taking on their long hikes and rides various 
army officers stationed at Washington. Few of 
these men were able to stand the pace set by the 
two energetic athletes, and it was of course par- 
tially due to this fact that Roosevelt in later years 
when he was President ordered some of the 
paunchy swivel-chair Cavalry and Infantry offi- 
cers out for cross-country rides and sent them 
back to their homes sore and blistered, and with 
65 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

every nerve clamoring for the soothing restfuhiess 
of an easy chair. 

Wood was dissatisfied in Washington, bored 
with the inaction. He longed for the strenuous 
life of the West. The desire became so strong 
that he began a plan to leave the army and start 
sheep-ranching in the West. It was the life, or as 
near the life as he could get, that he had been 
leading for years ; and the present contrast of 
those days in the open with the life he was now 
leading in Washington became too much for him. 

Here again seemed to arise a turning point. 
Had it not been for his own confident conviction 
that war was eventually coming with Spain, Wood 
would probably have gone to his open life on the 
prairie. What this would have meant to his future 
career nobody can tell, nor is speculation upon the 
subject very profitable. But it is interesting to 
note that what deterred him were his ideas on 
patriotism and a man's duty to his country, which 
struck a live, vibrating chord also in Theodore 
Roosevelt's nature and influenced Wood to stay 
in his position and wait. 

It is only possible to imagine now the conver- 
66 



The Official 



sations of these two kindred spirits on this sub- 
ject. Roosevelt, as is well known, was for war — 
war at once — and he did what little was done in 
those days to prepare. There must have been 
waging a long argument between the now expe- 
rienced Indian fighter and doctor, and the great- 
hearted American who knew so little of military 
affairs. 

These talks and arguments became so frank and 
outspoken that they were well-known in Wash- 
ington circles. Even President McKinley used to 
say to Wood : 

"Have you and Theodore declared war yet.^"* 

And Wood's answer was : 

"No, we think you ought to, Mr. President." 

As each day passed it seemed more likoly that 
Spain and America would become involved over 
the injustices that Cuba and the Philippines were 
being forced to suffer at the hands of their greedy 
and none too-loving mother country. On their 
long walks they discussed all the phases of such 
a conflict and each of them became anxious for 
war without further delay, for delay was costing 
time and money, and peaceful readjustment seemed 

67 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

quite out of the question. So keen had they be- 
come in this war question that the two of them 
became known in Washington as the "War 
Party." 

It was becoming evident to many others that 
war was inevitable when the destruction of the 
Maine in Havana Harbor brought the situation 
to a head. It found both these men prepared in 
their own minds as to what their courses should 
be. When Wood arrived at Fort Huachuca in 
1885 he was asked by Lawton why he came into 
the army. Lawton had studied law at Harvard 
after the Civil War and was interested in the 
views of a man who had studied medicine there. 
Wood replied that he had come into the army to 
get into the line at the first opportunity; and 
from that moment he began systematically his 
preparation for transfer. As a part of this policy 
he took every opportunity to do line duty. The 
result was that when the Spanish War came he 
had strong letters from Lawton, General Miles, 
General Graham, Colonel Wagner, General For- 
sythe, and others, recommending him for line 
command. These recommendations varied from 
68 



The Official 



a battalion to a regiment. Both Roosevelt and 
Wood had discussed the possibility of organizing 
regiments, Roosevelt in New York and Wood in 
Massachusetts, but as turmoil and confusion en- 
veloped the War Office they realized that this plan 
was not feasible. 

The efforts of Roosevelt's superiors to keep him 
in his official capacity as Assistant Secretary of 
the Navy and away from active service were fruit- 
less. Finally, when it became evident that he 
would go into the service and see active fighting, 
Secretary of War Alger offered him the colonelcy 
of a regiment of cavalry. Roosevelt, because of 
his lack of experience in military affairs, refused 
the offer but agreed to accept the position of 
lieutenant colonel of such a regiment if his 
friend, Leonard Wood, would accept the 
colonelcy. Secretary Alger and Leonard Wood 
agreed, and work was commenced at once organiz- 
ing a regiment that was later to become known as 
the Rough Riders. The official name of the regi- 
ment was the 1st Volunteer Cavalry. The name 
Rough Riders "just grew." The organization 
became known under that name among the friends 
69 



The Caieer of Leonard Wood 

of its leaders, later among the newspaper corre- 
spondents and consequently the public, and 
finally when it appeared in official documents it 
"was accepted as official. 

Preparedness was all too unknown in those 
days, but Wood, . who became its nation-wide 
champion in the days to come, was well schooled 
even in those days in its laws. He only learned 
more as time went on. The chaos and tangle of 
red tape, inefficiency, unpreparedness in all 
branches of the service blocked every effort that 
a few efficient and able men were making. Seeing 
the hopelessness of trying to accomplish anything 
under such conditions Wood introduced a novel 
method of organization into the War Depart- 
ment. 

Instead of pestering the hopeless and dismayed 
functionaries of the various Government depart- 
ments with requests for things they did not have 
and would not have been able to find if they did 
have them, Wood merely requested carte blanche 
to go ahead and get all necessary papers ready so 
that they might be signed at one sitting. He 
made requisitions for materials that he needed 
70 



The Official 



and when these materials were not to be found in 
the Government stores he wrote out orders di- 
rected to himself for the purchase in the open 
market of the things required. Alger recognized 
immediately that in Wood he had a man accus- 
tomed to action and full of vision — a man whom 
nothing could frighten. The two men understood 
one another. If those who surrounded the Secre- 
tary of War in those days had been as capable of 
organization, the history of Washington during 
wartime would have been quite different. But for 
the most part they failed. The see-nothing, hear- 
nothing, do-nothing, keep-your-finger-on-your- 
number spirit among many of them was quite 
great enough to throw the War Office into chaos. 
The game of "passing the buck" did not appeal to 
Wood ; neither did he stop to sympathize with a 
certain highly placed bureaucrat who complained: 

"My office and department were running along 
smoothly and now this damned war comes along 
and breaks it all up." 

When all of his papers and documents were 
ready, Wood appeared before Secretary Alger. 
71 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

"And now what can I do for you?" said the 
Secretary. 

"Just sign these papers, sir. That is all," re- 
plied the Rough Riders' Colonel. 

Alger, beset by incompetence, hampered by in- 
efficiency in his staff, was dumbfounded as he 
looked through the papers Wood had prepared for 
him to sign. There were telegrams to Governors 
of states calling upon them for volunteers ; 
requisitions for supplies and uniforms ; orders for 
mobilization and requisitions for transportation. 
Alger had little to say. He placed enough confi- 
dence in Wood to sign the papers and give him 
his blessing. 

When the army depots said that they could not 
supply uniforms. Wood replied that his men could 
wear canvas working clothes. As a result the 
Rough Riders, fighting through the tropical coun- 
try in Cuba, were far more comfortable than the 
soldiers in regulation blue. The new colonel 
seemed to know what he wanted. He wanted Krag 
rifles. There were few in existence, but General 
Flagler, Chief of Ordnance, appreciated what the 
young officer had done and saw that he got them. 
72 



The Official 



He did not want sabers for the men to run through 
one another in the pandemoni""^. of cavalry 
charges of half wild western horses. The Rough 
Riders therefore went into action carrying ma- 
chetes, an ideal weapon for the country in which 
they were to see service. With the saber they 
could do notliing ; but with the macht te they could 
do everything from hacking through dense jungle 
growths to sharpening a pencil. During the days 
that followed many troopers equipped with sabers 
conveniently lost them, but Wood's Rough Riders 
found the machetes invaluable. 

The authority to raise the regiment was given 
late in April, and on the twenty-fourth day of 
June, against heavy odds, it won its first action 
in the jungles at Las Guasimas. This was quick 
work, when it is remembered that two weeks of 
that short six or seven week period were practically 
used up in assembling and transporting the men 
by rail and sea. Here is where organization and 
well-thought-out plans made a remarkable showing. 

It was not only a question of knowing what he 
wanted. It was his old slogan : "Do it and don't 
talk about it." 

73 



THE SOLDIER 



IV 

THE SOLDIER 

The name "Rough Riders" will forever mean to 
those who read American history the spontaneous 
joy of patriotism and the high hearts of youth in 
this land. It was the modem reality of the ad- 
venturous musketeers — of those who loved ro- 
mance and who were ready for a call to arms in 
support of their country. They came from the 
cowboys of the west, from the stockbrokers' offices 
of Wall Street, from the athletic field, from youth 
wherever real youth was to be found. Something 
over 20,000 men applied for enrollment. None of 
them knew anything of war. None of them 
wanted to die, but they all wanted to try the great 
adventure under such leaders. And they have 
left an amazing record of the joyousness of the 
fight and the recklessness that goes with it. 

Now and then there have been organizations of 
a similar character in our history, but only here 
and there. It was the first outburst of that day 
77 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

of the spirits filled with high adventure; and the 
record cheers the rest of us as we plod along our 
way, just as it cheers us when we are ill in bed 
with indigestion to read again the old but ever- 
young Dumas. 

It would have been impossible for any one to 
have organized and controlled such a group with- 
out the ertthusiasm of men like Roosevelt and 
Wood, as well as the knowledge these two had of 
the West, the Southwest and the South. 

It detracts nothing from Roosevelt's greatness 
of spirit to say that it was Wood who did the 
organizing, the equipping of the regiment. In 
fact Roosevelt declined to be the Rough Riders' 
first Colonel, but consented to be the second in 
command only if Wood were made its commander. 
The fact that Roosevelt was not only known in 
the East but in the Northwest, and that Wood 
was quite as well known in the Southwest and the 
South meant that men of the Rough Riders type 
all over the country knew something of one or the 
other of the regiment's organizers. 

It detracts nothing from Wood's amazing ac- 
tivity in organization and capacity for getting 
78 



The Soldier 



things done, to say that had it not been for Roose- 
velt's wonderful popularity amongst those of the 
youthful spirit of the land the regiment would 
never have had its unique character or its unique 
name. 

This is not the place to tell the story of that 
famous band of men. But its organization is so 
important a part of Wood's life that it comes in 
for mention necessarily. 

In the Indian campaign with the regulars he 
had known the great importance of being properly 
outfitted and ready for those grilling journeys 
over the desert. In the Spanish War he learned, 
as only personal experience can teach, the amaz- 
ing importance of preparation for volunteers and 
inexperienced men. The whole story of the get- 
ting ready to go to Cuba was burned into his 
brain so deeply that it formed a second witness 
in the case against trusting to luck and the occa- 
sion which has never been eradicated from his 
mind. Yet this episode brought strongly before 
him also the fact that prepared though he might 
be there was no success ahead for such an organi- 
zation without the sense of subordination to the 
79 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

state and the nation which not only brought the 
volunteers in, but carried them over the rough 
places through disease and suffering and death to 
the end. 

Eight days after the telegram calling upon the 
Governors of New Mexico, Arizona, Oklahoma 
and Indian Territory for men to form the regi- 
ment, the recruits gathered at San Antonio where 
Wood was waiting to meet them. The most im- 
portant thing about them for the moment was 
that they knew nothing of military life. Wood 
believed with Old Light-Horse Harry Lee "That 
Government is a murderer of its citizens which 
sends them to the field uninformed and untaught, 
where they are meeting men of the same age and 
strength mechanized by education and disciplined 
for battle." 

Furthermore during the years that he had been 
in Washington Wood had used some of his spare 
time in studying parts of American history that 
are not included in school books. He knew that 
the volunteer system in the Revolutionary War 
had worn General Washington sick with discour- 
agement and fear lest all that he had built up be 
80 



The Soldier 



broken down through lack of discipline. He knew 
also that in the Civil War the volunteer system 
proved inadequate on both sides and that it was 
not until the war had gone on for two years that 
either the North or the South had what could 
properly be called an army. 

To aid him in the training of these troops he 
had the assistance of a number of officers who 
had seen service in the Regular Army, and to- 
gether they mapped out a course of drills and 
maneuvers that worked the men from a valueless 
mob into a regiment trained for battle. The hu- 
man material that they had to work with was the 
best ; for these men had been selected from many 
applicants. The lack of discipline and the igno- 
rance of military etiquette led to many amusing 
incidents. Colonel Roosevelt in his history of 
the Rough Riders tells of an orderly announcing 
dinner to Colonel Wood and the three majors by 
remarking genially; 

"If you fellers don't come soon, everything'll 
get cold." 

The foreign attaches said: "Your sentinels da 
not know much about the Manual of Arms, but 
81 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

they are the only ones through whose lines we 
could not pass. They were polite; but, as one of 
them said, 'Gents, I'm sorry, but if you don't 
stop I shall kill you.' " 

The difficulties to be surmounted were enor- 
mous ; and any officers less democratic and under- 
standing might have made a mess of it. Both 
Roosevelt and Wood understood the frontiersmen 
too well to misjudge any breaches of etiquette 
or to humiliate the extremely sensitive natures of 
men long used to life in the open. 

Upon Colonel Wood fell practically all the 
details of organization. There were materials and 
supplies of many kinds to be secured from the 
War Department; there were men to be drilled 
in the bare rudiments of military life; non-com- 
missioned officers and officers to be schooled, and 
a. thousand and one other details. At first the 
men were drilled on foot, but soon horses were 
purchased and mounted drill commenced, much 
to the delight of many of the cowpunchers who 
by years of training had become averse to walking 
a hundred yards if they could throw their legs 
over a horse. There was no end to the excite- 
82 



The Soldier 



ment when the horses arrived. Most of them were 
half-broken, but there were some that had never 
seen, much less felt, a saddle. The horses were 
broken to the delight of every one in camp, be- 
cause draining them meant bucking contests, and 
the more vicious the animal the better they 
liked it. 

From simple drills and evolutions the men ad- 
vanced to skirmish work and rapidly became real 
soldiers — not the polished, smartly uniformed 
military men of the Regular type, but hard fight- 
ers in slouch hats and brown canvas trousers with 
knotted handkerchiefs round their necks. 

The commander of any military unit at that 
time had much to worry about. It depended 
solely on him personally whether his men were 
properly equipped, whether they had food; and 
when orders came to move whether they had any- 
thing to move on. The advice that he could get, 
if he was willing to listen to it, was lengthy and 
worthless, and the help he could get from Wash- 
ington amounted to little or nothing. 

In May the regiment was ordered to proceed 
to Tampa. After a lengthy struggle with the 
83 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

railway authorities cars were put at the disposal 
of Colonel Wood, who left San Antonio on the 
29th with three sections, the remaining four sec- 
tions being left to proceeed later in charge of 
Lieutenant-Colonel Rooosevelt. The confusion of 
getting started was reduced to a minimum by 
Wood, who had worked out a scheme for em- 
barkation; but due to delay on the part of the 
railway authorities in providing proper facilities 
for handling the troops and equipment they were 
delayed four days. Everywhere along the line of 
travel they were cheered enthusiastically by peo- 
ple who came to greet the train on its arrival in 
towns and cities. 

Tampa was in chaos. There seemed to be no 
order or system for the disembarkation of troops. 
Every one asked for information and no one could 
give it. Officers, men, railroad employees and 
longshoremen milled about in a welter of con- 
fusion. The troops were dumped out with no 
prearranged schedule on the part of the officers 
in charge of the camp. There were no arrange- 
ments for feeding the men and no wagons in which 
to haul impedimenta. In such conditions it re- 
84 



The Soldier 



quired all the native vigor characteristic of their 
Colonel to bring some sort of order — all the 
knowledge he had gained from his Indian cam- 
paign. And even then there was still needed an 
unconquerable spirit that did not know what 
impossibilities were. 

After a few days at Tampa, Colonel Wood was 
notified that his comjnand would start for destina- 
tion unknown at once, leaving four troops and all 
the horses behind them. On the evening of June 
7th notification came that they would leave from 
Port. Tampa, nine miles away, the following morn- 
ing, and that if the troops were not aboard the 
transport at that time they could not sail. No 
arrangements were made by the port authorities 
for the embarkation. No information could be 
obtained regarding transportation by rail to the 
port. There was no information regarding the 
transport that the troops were to use. In an 
official report made to the Secretary of War 
Colonel Roosevelt had the following remarks to 
make about the conditions that confronted them 
in Tampa: 

". . . No information was given in advance 
83 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

what transports we should take, or how we should 
proceed to get aboard, nor did any one exercise 
any supervision over the embarkation. Each 
regimental commander, so far as I know, was left 
to find out as best he could, after he was down at 
the dock, what transport had not been taken, and 
then to get his regiment aboard it, if he was able, 
before some other regiment got it. Our regiment 
was told to go to a certain switch and take a train 
for Port Tampa at twelve o'clock, midnight. The 
train never came. After three hours of waiting, 
we were sent to another switch, and finally at six 
o'clock in the morning got possession of some coal 
cars and came down in them. When we reached 
the quay where the embarkation was proceeding, 
everything was in utter confusion. The quay 
was piled with stores and swarming with thousands 
of men of different regiments, besides onlookers, 
etc. The Commanding General, when we at last 
found him, told Colonel Wood and myself that he 
did not know what ship we were to embark on, and 
that we must find Colonel Humphrey, the Quarter- 
master General. Colonel Humphrey was not in 
his oflBce, and nobody knew where he was. The 
86 



The Soldier 



commanders of the different regiments were busy 
trying to find him, while their troops waited in 
the trains, so as to discover the ships to which 
they were allotted — some of these ships being at 
the dock and some in mid-stream. After a couple 
of hours' search. Colonel Wood found Colonel 
Humphrey and was allotted a ship. Immediately 
afterward I found that it had already been al- 
lotted to two other regiments. It was then coming 
to the dock. Colonel Wood boarded it in mid- 
stream to keep possession, while I double-quicked 
the men down from the cars and got there just 
ahead of the other two regiments. One of these 
regiments, I was afterward informed, spent the 
next thirty-six hours in cars in consequence." 

The conditions at Tampa provided material for 
a spirited exchange of letters and telegrams be- 
tween General Miles, who had taken command, 
and Secretary of War Alger. 

On June 4th, General Miles filed by telegraph 
the following report to the Secretary of War : 

"Several of the volunteer regiments came here 
without uniforms ; several came without arms, and 
some without blankets, tents, or camp equipage. 
87 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

The 32d Michigan, which is among the best, came 
without arms. General Guy V. Henry reports 
that five regiments under his cormnand are not 
fit to go into the field. There are over three hun- 
dred cars loaded with war material along the 
roads about Tampa. Stores are sent to the 
Quartermaster at Tampa, but the invoices and 
bills of lading have not been received, so that the 
officers are obliged to break open seals and hunt 
from car to car to ascertain whether they contain 
clothing, grain, balloon material, horse equip- 
ments, ammunition, siege guns, commissary stores, 
etc. Every effort is being made to bring order 
out of confusion. I request that rigid orders be 
given requiring the shipping officers to forward in 
advance complete invoices and bills of lading, with 
descriptive marks of every package, and the num- 
ber and description of car in which shipped. To 
illustrate the embarrassment caused by present 
conditions, fifteen cars loaded with uniforms were 
sidetracked twenty-five miles from Tampa, and 
remained there for weeks while the troops were 
suifering for clothing. Five thousand rifles, 
which were discovered yesterday, were needed by 
88 



The Soldier 



several regiments. Also the different parts of 
the siege train and ammunition for same, which 
will be required immediately on landing, are scat- 
tered through hundreds of cars on the sidetracks 
of the railroads. Notwithstanding these difficul- 
ties, this expedition will soon be ready to sail." 

In answer to this dispatch was sent the fol- 
lowing reply from Secretary Alger: 

"Twenty thousand men ought to unload any 
number of cars and assort contents. There is 
much criticism about delay of expedition. Better 
leave a fast ship to bring balance of material 
needed, than delay longer.'* 

This slight difference of opinion which a shrewd 
observer can discover between the lines was char- 
acteristic of the whole preparation of the United 
States army that undertook to carry on the war 
with Spain. As one remembers those days, or 
reads of them in detail, it seems as if every one did 
something wrong regularly, as if no one of ability 
was anywhere about. As a matter of fact, how- 
ever, the organizing and shipping of a suddenly 
acquired expeditionary volunteer force has never 
been accomplished in any other way. The truth 
89 



Tlie Career of Leonard Wood 

of the matter is that it can never be run properly 
at the start for the simple reason that there is 
no organization fitted to carry out the details. 

The officials in Washington who had to do with 
the army — good men in many cases, poor men in 
some cases — if they had been in office long had 
been handling a few hundred men here and there 
in the forts, on the plains, or at the regular mili- 
tary posts. They could no more be molded into 
a homogeneous whole than could the cowboys, 
stockbrokers, college athletes, and southern plant- 
ers maneuver until they had been drilled. 

To Colonel Wood, busy most of the hours of the 
day and night trying to get order out of chaos 
in his small part of the great rush, the whole epi- 
sode was a graphic demonstration of the need of 
getting ready. Many years later a much-adver- 
tised politician of our land said that an army was 
not necessary since immediately upon the need 
for defense of our country a miUion farmers would 
leave their plows and leap to arms. To an officer 
trying to find a transport train in the middle of 
the night with a thousand hungry, tired, half- 
trained men under him such logic might well have 
90 



The Soldier 



caused a smile, if nothing worse. Leave his plow 
at such a call the American Citizen will — and by 
the millions, if need be. He has done just that in 
the last two years. He will leap to arms — to 
continue the rhetoric — but what can he do if he 
finds no arms, or if they do not exist and cannot 
be made for nine months.'' 

But the tiling was not new to Wood even in 
those days. As he talks of that period now he 
says that it was not so bad. There was food, 
rough, but still food, and enough. There were 
transports. It only needed that they be found. 
If you could not get uniforms of blue, take uni- 
forms of tan. If you could not find sabers, go 
somewhere, in or out of the country, and buy 
them or requisition them and put in the charge 
later. 

Yet, even so, no man in such a position, going 
through what he went through, worrying hour by 
hour, could fail to see the object lesson and take 
the first opportunity when peace was declared to 
begin to preach the necessity for getting ready 
for the next occasion. And it was largely due to 
Leonard Wood, as the world well knows, that what 
91 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

little preparation was made in 1915 and 1916 in 
advance of the United States declaring war was 
made at all. It was the lessons acquired in the 
Spanish War and in the study of other wars that 
made of him the great prophet of preparedness. 

For several days the troops remained aboard 
the transport in Tampa harbor awaiting orders. 
The heat and discomfort told upon the men, but 
on the evening of June 13th orders came to start 
and the next morning found them at sea. On the 
morning of the 20th the transport came off the 
Cuban coast ; but it was not until the 22d that the 
welcome order for landing came. The troops 
landed at the squalid little village of Daiquiri in 
small boats, while the smaller war vessels shelled 
the town. 

In the afternoon of the next day, the Rough 
Riders received orders to advance; and Wood, 
leading his regiment, pushed on so as to be sure 
of an engagement with the enemy the next morn- 
ing. It was due to his energy that the Rough 
Riders did not miss the first fight. Under General 
Young's orders the Rough Riders took up a posi- 
92 



The Soldier 



tior at the extreme left of the front. The next 
day the action of "Las Guasimas" began. 

*'Shoot — don't swear," growled Wood as the 
fighting began. He strolled about encouraging 
his men and urging them to action. Under his 
quiet, cool direction they advanced slowly, forcing 
the enemy back, and finally driving him to his 
second line of defense. Soon the Rough Riders' 
right joined the left of the main body and in a 
concerted attack the Spaniards were routed, leav- 
ing much of their equipment in their hasty retreat. 

At this juncture it was reported to Roosevelt, 
whose detachment was separate from that of 
Wood, that Wood had been killed. Roosevelt 
immediately began taking over the command of 
the entire regiment, since it naturally devolved 
upon him. As he was consolidating his troops he 
came upon Wood himself very much alive. 

Major-General Joseph Wheeler made the fol- 
lowing report of the Rough Riders: 

"Colonel Wood's Regiment was on the extreme 
left of the line, and too far-distant for me to be 
a personal witness of the individual conduct of 
his officers and men ; but the magnificent and brave 

93 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

work done by the regiment, under the lead of 
Colonel Wood, testifies to his courage and skill. 
The energy and determination of this officer had 
been marked from the moment he reported to me 
at Tampa, Fla., and I have abundant evidence of 
his brave and good conduct on the field, and I 
recommend him for consideration of the Govern- 
ment." 

On the 25th, General Young was stricken by 
the fever and Wood took charge of the brigade on 
the 30th, leaving Rcosevelt in command of the 
Rough Riders. The afternoon of the 30th brought 
orders to march on Santiago, and the morning of 
July 1st found them in position three miles from 
the city, with Leonard Wood commanding the 
second dismounted cavalry brigade. During the 
next two days, the enemy fought fiercely to regain 
his lost positions, but the cool persistence of the 
American troops forced him constantly back- 
ward. 

In endorsing Wood's report of this action, 

General Wheeler said, "He showed energy, courage, 

and good judgment. I heretofore recommended 

him for promotion to a Brigadier-General. He 

94 



The Soldier 



deserves the highest commendation. He was 
under the observation and direction of myself and 
of my staif during the battle." 

After a short siege the Spanish command capit- 
ulated on the afternoon of July 17th and the 
American forces entered Santiago. 

Wood's promotion to Brigadier-General of the 
United States Volunteers came at once, and 
Roosevelt was made Colonel and placed in com- 
mand of the 2d Cavalry Brigade. 

The condition of our forces at this time, strug- 
gling against the unaccustomed and virulent dan- 
gers of the tropics, was pitiable. The "Round 
Robin" incident in which the commanding officers 
of the various divisions in the command reported 
to Major-General W. R. Shafter, that "the 
Army must be moved at once, or it will perish," 
has become a part of the record of the history of 
those times. Whether the sickness and disease 
they suffered could have been prevented became 
a matter of great controversy. 

This "Round Robin" was a document signed 
by practically all general officers present, in order 
to bring to the attention of the War Department 
95 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

the conditions existing in the army that had cap- 
tured Santiago showing that it was suffering 
severely from malaria and yellow fever ; that these 
men must be replaced; and that if they were not 
replaced thousands of lives would be lost. It was 
sent because instructions from Washington clearly 
indicated that the War Department did not under- 
stand the conditions, and it was feared that delay 
would cause enormous loss of life. The men had 
been in mud and water — the yellow fever country 
— for weeks and were thoroughly infected with 
malaria. Although he had signed the "Round 
Robin" with the other officers General Wood later 
on gave the following testimony before the War 
Investigation Committee : 

"We had never served in that climate, so pe- 
culiarly deadly from the effects of malaria, and 
in this respect my opinions have changed very 
much since the close of the war. If I had been 
called before you in the first week of August, I 
might have been disposed to have answered a little 
(differently in some respects. I have been there 
ever since, and have seen regiments come to Cuba 
in perfect health and go into tents with floors and 
96 



The Soldier 



with flies camped up on high hills, given boiled 
water, and have seen them have practically the 
identical troubles we had during the campaign. 
The losses may not have been as heavy, as we are 
organized to take them into hospitals protected 
from the sun which seemed to be a depressing 
cause. All the immune regiments serving in my 
department since the war have been at one time 
or another unfit for service. I have had all the 
officers of my staff repeatedly too sick for duty. 
I don't think that any amount of precaution or 
preparation, in addition to what we had, would 
have made any practical difference in the sick- 
ness of the troops of the army of invasion. This 
is a candid opinion, and an absolutely frank one. 
If I had answered this question in August, with- 
out the experience I have had since August, I 
might have been disposed to attribute more to the 
lack of tentage than I do now ; but I think the 
food, while lacking necessarily in variety, was 
ample." 

Only a few years later the explanation of yellow 
fever transmission became clear to all the world. 
This discovery and the definite methods of protec- 
97 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

tion against its spread and the spread of malaria 
were largely the result of Wood's administrative 
ability and his knowledge of medicine. For it was 
as the result of studies and experiments conducted 
under his direct supervision that it became known 
that yellow fever was the result of the bite of the 
mosquito and not of bad food or low, marshy 
country or bad air or any of the other factors 
which had so long been supposed to be its cause. 
The taking of Santiago practically ended the 
Spanish War. But for the military commander 
of the City of Santiago it began a new and epoch- 
making work. 



THE ORGANIZER 



V 

THE ORGANIZER 

To understand the work accomplished by 
Wood in Santiago, it is necessary to renew our 
picture of the situation existing in Cuba at the 
time and to reahze as this is done that the prob- 
lem was an absolutely new one for the young 
officer of thirty-seven to whom it was presented. 

Nobody can really conceive of the unbelievable 
condition of affairs unless he actually saw it or 
has at some time in his life witnessed a corre- 
sponding situation. Those who return from the 
battlefields on the Western Front of the Great 
War describe the scenes and show us pictures and 
we think we realize the horrors of destruction, yet 
one after another of us as we go there comes back 
with the same statement: "I had heard all about 
it, but I hadn't the least conception of what it 
really was until I saw it with my own eyes." 

In like manner we who are accustomed to reason- 
ably clean and well-policed cities can call up no 
101 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

real picture of what the Cuban cities were in those 
days, unless we saw them, or something like them. 

Yet in spite of this it is necessary to try to give 
some idea of the fact, in order to give some idea 
of the work of reorganization required. 

For four hundred years Cuba had been under 
the Spanish rule — the rule of viceroys and their 
agents who came of a race that has for centuries 
been unable to hold its own among the nations of 
the earth. Ideas of health, drainage, sanitation, 
orderly government, systematic commercial life — 
all were of an order belonging to but few spots in 
the world to-day. Here and there in the East — 
perhaps in what has been called the "cesspool of 
the world," Guayaquil, Ecuador — and in other 
isolated spots there are stiU such places, but they 
are fortunately beginning to disappear as perma- 
nent forms of human life. 

In Santiago there were about 50,000 inhab- 
itants. These people had been taxed and abused 
by officials who collected and kept for themselves 
the funds of the Province. Fear of showing wealth, 
since it was certain to be confiscated, led all 
classes of families to hide what little they had. 
102 



The Organizer 



Money for the city and its public works there was 
none, since all was taken for the authorities in 
Spain or for their representatives in Cuba. 
Spanish people in any kind of position treated the 
natives as if they were slaves — as indeed they 
were. No family was sure of its own legitimate 
property, its own occupation and its own basic 
rights. The city government was so administered 
as to deprive all the citizens of any respect for it 
or any belief in its statements, decrees or laws. 
Not only was this condition of affairs in existence 
at the time of the war but it had existed during 
the entire lifetime of any one living and during 
the entire lifetime of his father, grandfather and 
ancestors for ten generations. 

As a result no Cuban had any conception of 
what honest government, honest administration, 
honest taxation, honest dealings were. He not 
only had no conception of such things but he 
believed that what his family for generations and 
he during his life had known was the actual situa- 
tion everywhere throughout the world. He knew 
of nothing else. 

The city had no drainage system except tlte 
103 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

open gutter of the streets — never had had. The 
water system consisted of an elemental sort of 
dam six miles up in the hills outside the city, old, 
out of repair, constantly breaking down, and a 
single 11-inch pipe which had a capacity of 
200,000 gallons a day for the city — something like 
four gallons to a person. This was not sufficient 
for more than one-quarter of each day. In other 
words the city at the best was receiving for years 
only one-quarter of the water it absolutely needed 
for cleanliness. 

Plagues and epidemics, smallpox, yellow fever, 
bubonic plague, typhus and tetanus followed one 
another in regular succession. The streets for 
years had contained dead animals and many times 
in epidemics dead human beings — sights to which 
the citizens had been so accustomed throughout 
their lives that they paid no attention to them. 
The authorities being accustomed to keeping the 
public moneys for their own use spent little or 
nothing upon public works, cleaning the streets 
or making improvements. They did not build; 
they did not replace ; they only patched and re- 
paired when it was absolutely necessary. It was 
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The Organizer 



a situation difficult to conceive, impossible to 
realize. Yet one must constantly bear in mind 
that there not only appeared to be nothing out of 
the ordinary in this, but in reality there was 
nothing out of the ordinary. It was the accus- 
tomed, usual thing and had been so for centuries. 

The sense of personal responsibility to the com- 
munity was not dormant ; it did not exist. The 
sense of duty of those who governed to those 
whom they governed was not repressed by modern 
corruption only ; it had ceased to exist altogether. 
No city official was expected to do anything but 
get what he could out of those under him. No 
citizen knew anything but the necessity — to him 
the right — of concealing anytliing he had, of 
deceiving everybody whom he could deceive and 
of evading any law that might be promulgated. 

The integrity of the family and its right to live 
as it chose within restrictions required by gre- 
garious existence had disappeared — never had 
existed at all so far as those living knew. The 
responsibility of the individual to his govern- 
ment was unconceivable and inconceivable. 

Had all this not been so there would have been 
105 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

no war on our part with Spain, for the whole 
origin of the trouble which eventually led to war 
grew out of the final despair of men and women 
in Cuba who gradually came to realize in a dim 
way that something was wrong and unfair. Out 
of this grew internal dissension which constantly 
spilled over to interfere with international rela- 
tions. 

It was the inevitable breaking down of a civili- 
zation because of the years during which civiliza- 
tion's laws had been disregarded, and because all 
this took place in close proximity to a country 
where the reverse was the evident fact. There 
are such rotten spots still upon this earth — one 
just across our doorstep on the Rio Grande, and 
somebody some day must clean that house, too. 

Added to all this, and much more, was the fact 
that the city of Santiago had been besieged by 
land and by sea. Thus naturally even the con- 
ditions in this cesspool were intensely exagger- 
ated. 

Into such a plague-stricken, starving city on 
the 20th of July, 1898, Wood, then Brigadier 
General of United States Volunteers, thirty-seven 
106 



The Organizer 



years of age, fresh from the job of army surgeon 
to the President In the White House, some Indian 
fighting in the Southwest and the task of getting 
the Rough Riders organized into fighting shape — 
fresh from the fighting that had taken place on 
and since July 1st — into this situation on July 
20th General Wood was summoned by General 
Shafter, commanding the American forces, with 
the information that he had been detailed to take 
command of the city, secure and maintain order, 
feed the starving and reorganize generally. 

Why he was selected may be easily guessed. He 
was a military man who had made good recently, 
who had made good in the Southwest, whom the 
President knew and trusted — and he was a doc- 
tor who had just shown great organizing abihty. 
The job itself was as new to him as would have 
been the task in those days of flying. But with 
his inherited and acquired sense of values, of the 
essentials of life, with his education and his char- 
acteristic passion for getting ready he started at 
once to pull off the wall paper, hammer away the 
plaster and examine the condition of the beams 
which supported this leaning, tottering, out-of 
107 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

repair wing of the world's house of civilization. 

What he found was rotten beams ; no integrity 
of family ; no respect for or responsibility to the 
state ; no sense on the part of the citizens of what 
they owed to themselves, or their families, or their 
city — not the slightest idea of what government 
of the people for the people by the people meant. 
The government was robbing the family. The 
family was robbing the government. That was 
the fundamental place to begin, if this wing of the 
house was not to fall. 

Naturally the immediate and crying needs had 
to be corrected at once. But Wood began all on 
the same day on the beams as well as on the 
plaster and wall paper — this 20th day of July, 
1898. Another man might well have forgotten 
or never have thought of the fundamentals in the 
terrible condition within his immediate vision. 
That seems to be the characteristic of Wood — 
that while he started to cure the illness, he at the 
same time started to get ready to prevent its re- 
currence. And there we may perhaps discover 
something of the reason for his success, some- 
thing of the reason why people lean on him and 
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The Organizer 



look to him for advice and support in time of 
trouble. 

These immediate needs were inconceivable to 
those who lived in orderly places and orderly times. 
Of the 50,000 inhabitants, 15,000 were sick. 
There were in addition 2,000 sick Spanish soldiers 
and 5,000 sick American troops. Over all in the 
hot haze of that tropical city hung the terror of 
yellow fever, showing its sinister face here and 
there. At the same time a religious pilgrimage 
to a nearby shrine taken at this moment by 18,000 
people led to an immense increase in disease be- 
cause of the bad food and the polluted water 
which the pilgrims ate and drank. In the streets 
piles of filth and open drains were mixed with 
the dead bodies of animals. Houses, deserted be- 
cause of deaths, held their dead — men, women and 
children — whom no one removed and no one buried. 
All along the routes approaching the city bodies 
lay by the roadside, the living members of the 
family leaving their dead unburied because they 
were too weak and could only drag themselves 
along under the tropic sun in the hope that they 
109 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

might reach their homes before they, too, should 
die. 

This was enhanced by the fact of the siege and 
the consequent lack of food. The sick could not 
go for food ; and if they could have done so there 
was little or none to be had. Horrible odors 
filled the air. Terror walked abroad. It was 
a prodigious task for anybody to undertake, but 
it was undertaken, and in the following manner: 

Simultaneously certain main lines of work were 
mapped out by Wood and officers put in charge 
of each subject, the commanding officer reser^dng 
for himself the planning, the general supervision, 
the watching, as well as the instituting of new 
laws based upon the existing system of the Code 
Napoleon. 

It was first necessary to feed the people and 
to bury the dead. There were so many of the 
latter that they had to be collected in lots of 
ninety or a hundred, placed between railway irons, 
soaked in petroleum and burned outside the city. 
It was such dreadful work, this going into de- 
serted homes and collecting dead bodies for the 
flames, that men had to be forced to it. All were 
110 



The Organizer 



paid regularly, however, and the job was done. 
General Wood's own account of this task is bet- 
ter than any second-hand description can even 
hope to be. 

"Horrible deadly work it was, but at last it 
was finished. At the same time numbers of men 
were working night and day in the streets remov- 
ing the dead animals and other disease-producing 
materials. Others were engaged in distributing 
food to the hospitals, prisons, asylums and con- 
vents — in fact to everybody, for all were starving. 
What food there was, and it was considerable, 
had been kept under the protection of the Span- 
ish army to be used as rations. Some of the far- 
seeing and prudent had stoi'ed up food and pre- 
pared for the situation in advance, but these were 
few. 

"All of our army transportation was engaged 
in getting to our own men the tents, medicines 
and the thousand and one other things required 
by our camps, and as this had to be done through 
seas of mud it was slow work. We could expect 
no help from this source in our distribution of 
rations to the destitute population, so we seized 
111 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

all the carts and wagons we could find in the 
streets, rounded up drivers and laborers with the 
aid of the police, and worked them under guard, 
willing or unwilling, but paying well for what 
they did. At first we had to work them far into 
the night. 

"Everything on wheels in the city was at work. 
Men who refused and held back soon learned that 
there were things far more unpleasant than cheer- 
ful obedience, and turned to work with as much 
grace as they could command. All were paid a 
fair amount for their services, partly in money, 
partly in rations, but all worked ; some in remov- 
ing the waste refuse from the city, others in dis- 
tributing food. Much of the refuse in the streets 
was burned outside at points designated as crema- 
tories. Everything was put through the flames, 

"In the Spanish military hospital the number 
of sick rapidly increased. From 2,000 when we 
came in, the number soon ran up to 3,100 in hos- 
pital, besides many more in their camps. Many 
of the sick were suffering from malaria, but 
among them were some cases of yellow fever. 
Poor devils, they all looked as though hope had 
112 



The Organizer 



fled, and, as they stood in groups along the water- 
front, eagerly watching the entrance to the har- 
bor, it required very little imagination to see that 
their thoughts were of another country across the 
sea, and that the days of waiting for the trans- 
ports were long days for them." * 

A yellow fever hospital was established on an 
island in the harbor. The city was divided into 
districts and numbers of medical men put in 
charge, their duty being to examine each house 
and report sanitary conditions, sickness and food 
situations. As a result of these reports Wood 
issued orders for action in each district so that 
the food, the available medical force and the sup- 
plies of all kinds should be used and distributed 
to produce the greatest results in the shortest 
possible time. In one district alone just outside 
the city there were thousands of cases of small- 
pox in November. The streets were filled with 
filth and dead and wrecked furniture. The wells 
were full of refuse. The task seemed almost hope- 
less. Yet, under Wood's system of detailing 
squads to undertake the work in certain sections 
*Scribner's Magazine. 

113 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

with the system of centralized reporting, the epi- 
demic was checked in a month, the district cleaned 
and scrubbed from end to end with disinfectants 
and the small pox cut down to a few scattering 
cases. In this district of Holguin the plan was 
adopted of vaccinating two battalions of the Sec- 
ond Immune Regiment. These men were then 
sent into the district to establish good sanitary 
conditions and clean up the yellow fever. The 
work was done successfully without the occurrence 
of a single case of smallpox amongst the American 
troops. No better demonstration of the efficacy 
of vaccination was ever given. 

Thus the first task of feeding the starving pop- 
ulation and cleaning the city was simultaneously 
undertaken by districts under the direction of of- 
ficers having authority to proceed along certain 
established lines. Episodes illustrating these "es- 
tablished lines" are many, but there is space here 
for only one or two of them. 

It developed at the outset that there was food 

and meat in the city wliich the people could use, 

but which was beyond their reach on account of 

the high prices. General Wood no sooner heard 

114* 



The Organizer 



of this than he "established a line of procedure" 
to correct it. He sent for the principal butchers 
of the city and asked: 

"How much do you charge for your meat?" 

"Ninety cents a pound, Seiior." 

"What does it cost you?" 

There was hesitation and a shuffling of feet; 
then one of the men said in a whining voice : 

*'Meat is very, very dear, your Excellency." 

**How much a pound?" 

"It costs us very much, and . . ." 

"How much a pound?" 

"Fifteen cents, your Excellency ; but we have 
lost much money during the war and . . ." 

*'So have your customers. Now meat will be 
sold at 25 cents a pound, and not one cent more. 
Do you understand?" 

Then, turning to the alderman, he charged him 
to see that his order was carried out to the let- 
ter, unless he wanted to be expelled from office. 

Thenceforward meat was sold in the markets at 
25 cents. The same simple plan was evolved for 
all other kinds of supplies. Naturally such high- 
handed methods caused a great hue and cry 
115 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

amongst certain of the citizens and no such method 
could have been carried out by any one but a 
military commander with absolute authority. 
Some of the newspapers, all of which had been 
given a free hand by Wood and were allowed for 
the first time to say what they liked, started a 
campaign against the new administration and its 
busy head. But hand in hand with this autocratic 
procedure went the organization of native courts, 
the appointment of native officials for carrying 
on the government, native police to catch Cuban 
bandits and native judges to give decisions and 
impose sentences. Furthermore, in these same 
days of autocratic action, the people gradually 
discovered that although everybody was forced to 
work all those who did got paid — something new 
to the Santiago-Cuban consciousness — that the 
invading American army was not arresting na- 
tives in the streets and thrusting them into jail, 
but that their own native police were doing this 
work. Gradually, as the city became clean, as 
prices fell, as payment for work came in, as ill- 
ness decreased, as law became fairly administered 
by the Cuban officials themselves, a certain awe 
116 



Tlie Organizer 



and veneration grew for the invaders and their 
big, hardworking head. It was a revelation, un- 
believable jet true, unknown yet a fact, which 
opened up to the minds of these long-suffering, in- 
competent people the first vision of an existence 
which has since through the same agency of Gen- 
eral Wood become a fact throughout the whole 
island, so that Cuba is to-day a busy, healthy, 
self-governing state. 

Parallel with the feeding and sanitation work 
General Wood put into effect a certain system of 
road building where it was necessary in order to 
keep the people at work and allow them to make 
money and at the same time to produce necessary 
transportation facilities. Five miles of asphalt 
pavement, fifteen miles of country pike, six miles 
of macadam were built and 200 miles of country 
road made usable out of funds collected from die 
regular taxes which had heretofore gone into the 
pockets of the Spanish government officials. The 
costs varied somewhat from the old days, as may 
well be guessed. A quarter of a mile of macadam 
pavement built by the Spaniards the year before 
along the water-front had cost $180,000. Wood's 
117 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

engineers built five miles of asphalt pavement at 
a cost of $175,000. 

At the same time a reorganization of the Cus- 
tom House service was instituted which increased 
receipts ; j ails and hospitals were reorganized un- 
der the system existing in the United States ; and 
perhaps in the end the greatest work of all was 
the establishment of an entirely new school system 
based on an adaptation of the American form. 
Teachers had disappeared. There were none, 
since nobody paid them. School houses were 
empty, open to any tramp for a night's lodging. 
In a few months this was changed so that kinder- 
gartens and schools were opened and running. 

In fact the work was the making of a new com- 
munity, the building of a new life — the repairing 
of the tottering wing of the old, old house. 

All this, as may be supposed, did not take place 
without friction, obstruction, and without at first 
a great deal of bad blood. 

Wood's methods in dealing with disturbances 
were his own and can only be suggested here by 
isolated anecdotes and incidents. When an of- 
ficial who had the Spanish methods in his blood 
118 



TJie Organizer 



did not appear after three invitations he was car- 
ried into the commanding officer's presence bj a 
squad of soldiers in his pajamas. The next time 
he was invited he came at once. 

"One night about eight o'clock, General Wood 
was writing in his office in the palace. At the 
outer door stood a solitary sentinel, armed with 
a rifle. Suddenly there burst across the plaza, 
from the San Carlos Club, a mob of Cubans — 
probably 500. Within a few minutes a shower 
of stones, bricks, bottles and other missiles struck 
the Spanish Club, smashing windows and doors. 
A man, hatless and out of breath, rushed up to 
the sentry at the palace entrance and shouted, 
*Where's the General? Quick! The Cubans are 
trying to kill the officers and men in the Spanish 
Club!' 

"General Wood was leisurely folding up his 
papers when the sentry reached him. 'I know it,' 
he said, before the man had time to speak. *I have 
heard the row. We will go over and stop it.' 

"He picked up his riding-whip, the only weapon 
he ever carries, and, accompanied by the one 
American soldier, strolled across to the scene of 
119 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

the trouble. The people in the Spanish Club had 
got it pretty well closed up, but the excited Cu- 
bans were still before it, throwing things and 
shouting imprecations, and even trying to force 
a way in by the main entrance. 

" 'Just shove them back, sentry,' said General 
Wood, quietly. 

"Around swung the rifle, and, in much less time 
than is taken in the telling, a way was cleared 
in front of the door. 

" 'Now shoot the first man who places his foot 
upon that step,' added the General, in his usual 
deliberate manner. Then he turned and strolled 
back to the palace and his writing. Within an 
hour the mob had dispersed, subdued by two men, 
one rifle and a riding-whip. And the lesson is 
still kept in good memory." 

*'One day about the middle of November the 
native calentura or fever, from which General 
Wood suffered greatly, sent him to his home, which 
is on the edge of the town, earlier than usual. 
He had no sooner reached the house than he was 
notified by telephone that a bloody riot had oc- 
curred at San Luis, a town 20 miles out on the 
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The Organizer 



Santiago Railway. The fever was raging in the 
General, his temperature exceeding 105, and he 
was so sick and dizzy that he staggered as he 
walked. But with that indomitable will that had 
served him on many a night raid against hostile 
Apaches, he entered his carriage and was driven 
back to the city. He picked up his chief signal 
officer, Captain J. E. Brady, at the Palace and 
hastened to the building occupied by the telegraph 
department of the Signal Corps on Calle En- 
ramadas. Captain Brady took the key at the 
instrument. 

" 'Tell the operator to summon members of the 
rural guard who were fired on, and the command- 
ing officer of the Ninth Immunes,' ordered the 
General, tersely. Thenceforward, for three hours 
General Wood sat there, questioning, listening, 
issuing orders, all with a promptness and cer- 
tainty of judgment that would have been extraor- 
dinary in a man quite at his ease ; yet all the time, 
as he could not help showing in mien and features, 
the raging fever was distressing to the point of 
agony. Those about him could not but marvel 
at the man's resolution and endurance. The fol- 
121 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

lowing day, although still racked with fever, he 
went by special train to San Luis and investi- 
gated the affair in person." * 

The basis of the great work, however, as Gen- 
eral Wood has himself repeatedly said in con- 
versation and in print, was to effect aU this re- 
generation without causing the Cubans to look 
upon the American Army and the American con- 
trol as they had for years looked upon the Span- 
ish Army and the Spanish control. That his suc- 
cess here in the most diflBcult phase of the whole 
prodigious enterprise was absolute has been tes- 
tified to in innumerable ways and instances. 

Only one or two of these can be given here, but 
they are illuminating in the extreme and they sug- 
gest the success of the methods of the man who 
had been put in charge of this difficult work. 

Death amongst the Spanish soldiers had been 
very heavy from yellow fever and pernicious ma- 
laria and the course of Ihe troop-ships which car- 
ried them back to Spain was marked by long 
lists of burials at sea. These ships carried with 
them most of the nurses and nursing sisters to 

* Fortnightly Review. 

122 



The Organizer 



care for the sick and dying during the voyage. It 
was a great drain on the nursing force at Wood's 
disposal in Santiago. He, therefore, hit upon 
the idea of offering to pay for the return trips of 
these nurses if they would come back at once ; with 
the result that most of them gladly accepted and 
rendered splendid service in Santiago to the sick 
as a token of their appreciation of the military 
governor's act. This did much to establish 
friendly relations between Americans, Spaniards 
and Cubans who had so short a time before been 
enemies. 

Another vital point was the relations of the in- 
vaders with the Church. It had never been con- 
templated that a Catholic viceroy should be re- 
placed by a Protestant. This viceroy had so 
many intimate relations with the Catholic Church 
in which he represented the Catholic king that it 
was absolutely necessary for whatever American 
happened to be governor to play the game regard- 
less of what his own religious scruples might be. 
As an interesting example of how well this was 
handled by Wood the story of Bishop JBemaba is 
a charming instance. 

123 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

This bishop was elevated from priesthood while 
Wood was governor and because of his affection 
and respect for the American officer he asked him 
to walk with him during the ceremonious proces- 
sion from the priest's little parish church, where 
he had served, to the old cathedral where he was 
to officiate thereafter. It was a solemn religious 
function and has been described, because of the 
terrific surroundings of the hour, as not unlike 
the ceremony which took place in Milan after the 
Great Plague. 

The entire population of the city with some 
forty or fifty thousand from the surrounding hills 
packed the streets along the route of the proces- 
sion. None of them had had a blessing from his 
own Cuban clergy in many years. It was hke a 
mediaeval scene. The old bishop bowed by years, 
weakened by his recent grief at the suffering of 
his people and by the excitement of the moment, 
and General Wood, the American Protestant, 
walked together under the bishop's canopy. The 
people in the streets, seeing this, cried: "Thank 
God, the General is a Catholic ! We didn't know 
it!" 

124 



The Organizer 



From time to time the old bishop, tired with 
the exertion of swinging the censer with the holy 
water, would hand it to Wood and ask him to con- 
tinue the function by his side until he could secure 
a slight respite. Occasionally as he leaned for- 
ward to bless the thousands who lined the way 
and who had come to feel his touch and kiss his 
hand his miter would slip to one side on his head 
and the unperturbed American general would lean 
forward and straighten it for him. Each time 
the old bishop turned to him and murmured, 
"Thank God, you are here ! I am so old that I 
could not have made this journey, if you had not 
been here to help me." 

Wood told him that he was not a Catholic, that 
indeed from Bishop Bernaba's point of view he 
was a heretic and bound for Hell. 

"No," said the bishop, with a smile, "you are 
a good Catholic ; only you do not know it." 

Small wonder that when he left Santiago in 
the spring of 1899 to visit the United States Wood 
was presented by the people of the city with a 
magnificent hand-work scroll which said in Span- 
ish: 

125 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

"The people of the City of Santiago de Cuba 
to General Leonard Wood . . . the greatest of 
all your successes is to have won the confidence 
and esteem of a people in trouble." 

Small wonder that in December, 1899, less than 
a year after the United States took over the island, 
he was appointed by President McKinley Gover- 
nor General of Cuba and made a Major General 
of United States Volunteers! 



THE ADMINISTRATOR 



VI 

THE ADMINISTRATOR 

It has been said that General Wood's work in 
Havana as Governor-General of Cuba was the 
continuation of his work at Santiago on a larger 
scale. This would seem to be erroneous. 

The Santiago problem was the cleaning and 
reorganizing of a city of 50,000 inhabitants. 
J^Iany stringent measures could properly be put 
into operation in such a community which were 
quite impossible in a city of 350,000 inhabitants 
like Havana, or in a state of two and one-half 
million people such as the Island of Cuba. It was 
possible in an epidemic to close up houses tempo- 
rarily, stop business and commercial intercourse 
for a period where only 50,000 people were con- 
cerned. But to stop the daily commerce of a 
large city, the capital of a state, was out of the 
question. 

Furthermore the problem in the first instance 
was one of organizing a community in so deplor- 
129 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

able a condition that it was on the verge of an- 
archy. In the second instance much of the clean- 
ing-up process had been at least begun by other 
American officers. It was here in Havana a case 
of administration and statecraft as against or- 
ganization. 

It was the taking of a crown colony of Spain 
— a kingdom — which had never been anything; but 
a royal colony, and turning it in two years and a 
half into a republic, self-governed, self-judged, 
self-administered and self-supporting. 

Roughly speaking, there ad never been such a 
case. Even now the proposal of the Philippine 
Islands would practically be the second case 
should independence be granted to them by the 
United States. In all history a colony, once a 
colony, either has remained so, or has revolted 
from the mother country and by force of arms 
established its own independence. 

These two problems, then, were quite differ- 
ent in their essential elements and they required 
different qualities in the man who settled them. 

President McKinley's instructions to the new 
Governor-General were "To prepare Cuba, as rap- 
130 



The Admimstrator 



idly as possible, for the establishment of an in- 
dependent government, republican in form, and a 
good school system." And both the President 
and the Secretary of War left their representa- 
tive entirely to his own resources to work this out. 
His work was laid out for him and he was given 
a free hand. 

General Wood, therefore, in December, 1899, 
after having been received with a magnificent ova- 
tion on his return to the United States, made a 
Major-General and given an LL.D. degree by his 
own University of Harvard — after having re- 
turned to Santiago suddenly upon the outbreak 
of yellow fever, cleaned the town, covered it with 
chloride of lime, soaked it with corrosive subli- 
mate, burned out its sewers and cesspools, and 
checked the epidemic, — finally took up his resi- 
dence in Havana and began his work. 

One can readily imagine the immediate prob- 
lems all of which needed settlement at once, none 
of which could be settled without study of the 
most thorough and vital sort. Wood's method 
was that of an administrator and statesman of 
great vision. He immediately proceeded to se- 
131 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

cure wherever he could find them the best men 
on each of the problems and set them to work 
with such assistance, expert and otherwise, as 
they required to make reports to him within a 
limited time as to what should be done in their 
particular branches of the government. 

Again, it was so simple that it can be told in 
words of one syllable. But the great adminis- 
trator appeared in the selection of the men for 
the jobs and in the final acceptance, rejection, 
or modification of the plans proposed. While he 
was an absolute monarch of the Island he never 
exerted that authority unless there was no other 
possible course. In all cases he left decisions in 
so far as that could be done to native bodies and 
native representatives and native courts with full 
authority. 

Chief Justice White of the Supreme Court upon 
being consulted told him that in the main the laws 
were sound but that the procedure was faulty; 
that he must look closely to this and make many 
modifications. This hint from a great authority 
became his guide. 

The most crying needs of the moment were the 
132 



The Administrator 



courts and the prisons. Prisoners were held 
without cause ; trials were a farce ; the prisons 
themselves were filthy places where all ages were 
herded together ; court houses were out of repair 
and out of use ; records hardly existed, and the 
whole machinery of justice was that of a decayed 
colony of a decayed kingdom totally without the 
respect of the public and without self-respect. 

General Wood began with characteristic 
promptness to get to the root of the matter. The 
principal officer charged with the prosecution of 
cases was removed and a mixed commission, se- 
lected and appointed by himself, substituted. As 
a result in a short tin^e six hundred prisoners were 
freed, because there was not sufficient evidence 
against them to warrant their arrests. Court 
houses were put into repair. Judges with fixed 
and sufficient salaries were appointed ; officials 
were set at work upon salaries that were fair and 
— ^what is far more to the point — were regularly 
paid. Prison commissions appointed by Wood 
examined conditions and the prisons were cleaned^ 
moved to other buildings, or renovated and re- 
modelled according to modern American methods, 
133 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

The result in less than six months was that na- 
tive officials were conducting this work in a self- 
respecting, honorable manner, convicting or re- 
leasing prisoners in short order and bringing the 
idea of justice into respect in the public mind. 
The establishment of order was a natural result. 
Outbreaks and riots became unknown. The peo- 
ple began to realize as no amount of exhibition 
of power on the part of the invaders could ever 
have made them realize that peace, order, fair 
play, and a chance to Hve had come upon the land 
in what seemed some miraculous fashion. 

The respect of the individual for the State was 
bom again in the Cuban mind — born, perhaps it 
is fairer to say, for the first time in the heart 
of this much abused and ignorant people. Once 
this really pierced their inner consciousness — the 
inner consciousness of the whole people, of every- 
body poor or rich — these people felt safe and se- 
cure and knew they could take up their enter- 
prises with safety and with hope of adequate re- 
turns which should belong to themselves. 

It was so sound to do this wherever possible 
through the medium of the Cubans themselves and 
134 



The Administrator 



not through army officials ! It was so sane and 
clear-visioned a method to begin with this great 
beam of the remodeled Cuban house — this build- 
ing up by the process of individual observation 
of confidence in those who ruled them ! — and the 
men whom General Wood selected to draw the 
plans were experts in just such work. He se- 
lected them. He passed on their schemes. They 
did the work. And to this day he gives them 
credit for the whole thing. 

Next came the necessity for inculcating the 
idea of government of the people by the people. 
Six months after taking office General Wood had 
appointed a commission on a general election law, 
had adopted a plan much after our own electoral 
laws with the Australian ballot system and a lim- 
ited suffrage, had prepared in his own office in 
Havana all the ballots, ballot boxes, circulars de- 
scribing election rules and had successfully held 
throughout Cuba the first real election ever known 
on the island — ever known to the people. Muni- 
cipal officials and local representatives were 
chosen everywhere by the people themselves for 
the first time in their lives. 
135 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

Whether such a thing would be successful and 
prove effective the Governor-General did not 
know. But he knew that it was the right thing 
to do if they were ever to govern themselves ; he 
trusted them — and he took the risk. 

Next — or rather at the same time with these 
two basic lines of constructive building — came the 
school system. When the United States took over 
the Island the school system was non-existent. 
There was not one single schoolhouse belonging 
to the State anywhere on the Island. There 
were no schools at all except private and church 
schools and very few of them. Children in the 
mass did not attend school. There was no foun- 
dation to build on. The whole school system had 
to be created new from the bottom to the top. 
That schools were another of the main beams of 
this new house is self-evident. Yet the action 
taken was much more far-seeing than would have 
been possible without a single autocrat to decree, 
and without a man who could see many years 
ahead. 

"I knew," said the Governor-General in one of 
his reports, "that we were going to establish a 
136 



The Administrator 



government of and bj the people in Cuba and 
that it was going to be transferred to them at the 
earliest possible moment; and I believed that the 
success of the future government would depend 
as much upon the foundation and extension of its 
public schools as upon any other factor, that such 
a system must be entirely in the hands of the peo- 
ple of the island." 

This was the situation when in the beginning 
of 1900 within a month after taking office Wood 
selected a young West Pointer who had been a 
teacher to draw up a school system and school 
laws. The result was an adaptation of the Ohio 
and Massachusetts School Systems ; and when in 
1902 the Island was turned over to the Cubans 
three thousand eight hundred schools were in op- 
eration in good schoolhouses, with native teach- 
ers well paid, with 256,000 pupils, and at an ex- 
penditure of $4,000,000 a year out of a total an- 
nual state revenue of $17,000,000. In other 
words nearly one-quarter of the Island's revenue 
had been spent on the education of children to 
make them good and self-respecting citizens where 
nothing whatever had been spent before. 
137 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

It was a very bold step. No other country on 
earth had ever spent so large a portion of its reve- 
nue on education. The appropriations in the 
United States to-day are pitiful in comparison — 
and yet our country is supposed to be doing 
pretty well by its future citizens. Again the step 
taken by the Governor-General was a piece of 
construction of the main essentials — of the things 
that make no show, but build, always build. 

American teachers were not employed, in or- 
der that the Cubans filled with suspicion of what 
the invaders were going to do might not be led 
to believe that there was any attempt being made 
to "Americanize" the Island. But on the other 
hand in the summer of 1900 one thousand of these 
new Cuban teachers were invited with all their 
expenses paid to spend several months at Har- 
vard University in Cambridge and learn some- 
thing of American pedagogy. The preparations 
for transporting this large number and handling 
them during their stay in the United States in- 
volved a large amount of work, but the trip was 
carried through without mishap or accident of 
any kind, and the thousand teachers returned to 
138 



The A^mhmtrator 



their homes in the Island not only with the great 
benefit resulting from this instruction, but with 
the immense stimulus of a visit to an organized 
and comparatively smoothly running civilization. 
What they saw was of even greater benefit to them 
in the long run than what they learned in their 
summer courses. 

At this time the city of Havana was a fever- 
ridden, dangerous city. Yellow fever and other 
tropical diseases existed always and blazed up into 
epidemics at certain seasons of the year. Such 
systems of drainage as existed emptied into the 
harbor or into the street gutt::rs. A beginning 
had been made to cleanse the city before Wood 
took charge, but little had been done in the smaller 
cities of the Island, all of which were in some- 
what the same condition as Santiago in 1898 ex- 
cept for the added scourge in the latter city re- 
sulting from its siege. 

Nevertheless different methods had to be used 
in Havana. It is impossible here to go into the 
mass of detail in the appointing of commissions 
to carry out the different sanitary works that 
were required in Havana and all over the Island 
139 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

in cities, towns and country districts. But, fa- 
miliar as it now is, there will never be an account 
of this work which has made Cuba one of the 
healthiest places to live in either in or out of the 
tropics — there will never be a description so short 
that it cannot tell of the work of the unselfish, al- 
truistic group of physicians who solved the yellow 
fever problem for all time. It gives him who 
writes even now something of a thrill to tell a lit- 
tle of it again and to pay tribute to the man who 
organized the work and to the men who carried 
it out under his unfailing support and encourage- 
ment. It is the greatest achievement of medicine 
since the discovery oi the smallpox vaccine. It 
is one of the bright spots in the history of man- 
kind. 

Here it is told best by the organizer of it in his 
official language with all the reserve and reticence 
that go with all the writing he has ever issued. 
Between the lines one reads th^ story of a hundred 
cases of bravery as great as that required by any 
fighter in the world, a hundred instances of self- 
sacrifice and risk willingly given in those fever- 
stricken places and quarantined hospitals, freely 
140 



-VJ' 

The Admimstrator 



offered that those who came after might be saved 
from the black cloud which then hung over all 
tropical and semi-tropical countries. 

In the Spring and summer of 1900 a yellow 
fever epidemic broke out in Havana and in many 
parts of the Island. All the sanitary methods 
known to man seemed to have no effect upon it. 
Nothing seemed to do much good. 

At this point General Wood, knowing of the 
theory of Dr. Findlay that yellow fever was trans- 
mitted by the bite of a mosquito and at his wits' 
end to know what step to take next, received no- 
tice that a commission consisting of Drs. Reed, 
Carroll and Lazaer had been appointed to make 
a thorough study of the disease at first hand and 
report to him. "After several preliminary in- 
vestigations Dr. Lazaer submitted himself as a 
subject for an experiment for the purpose of 
demonstrating that the yellow fever could be trans- 
mitted in this way. He was inoculated with an 
infected mosquito, took the fever and died. Dr. 
Carroll was also bitten and had a serious case of 
jellow fever, but fortunately recovered. 

"The foregoing was the situation when Doctors 
141 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

Reed, Carroll and Kean called at headquarters 
and stated that they believed the point had been 
reached where it was necessary to make a number 
of experiments on human beings and that they 
wanted money to pay those who were willing to 
submit themselves to these experiments and they 
needed authority to make experiments. They 
were informed that whatever money was required 
would be made available, and that the military 
Governor would assume the responsibility for the 
experiments. They were cautioned to make these 
experiments only on sound persons, and not until 
they had been made to distinctly understand the 
purpose of the same and especially the risk they 
assumed in submitting themselves as subjects for 
these experiments, and to always secure the writ- 
ten consent of the subjects who offered themselves 
for this purpose. It was further stipulated that 
all subjects should be of full legal age. With this 
understanding, the work was undertaken in a care- 
ful and systematic manner. A large number of 
experiments were made. 

"The Stegomyia mosquito was found to be be- 
yond question the means of transmitting the yel- 
142 



The Administrator 



low fever germ. This mosquito, in order to be- 
come infected, must bite a person sick with the 
yellow fever during the first five days of the dis- 
ease. It then requires approximately ten days 
for the germs so to develop that the mosquito can 
transmit the disease, and all non-immunes who are 
bitten by a mosquito of the class mentioned, in- 
fected as described, invariably develop a pro- 
nounced case of yellow fever in from three-anc"- 
one-half to five days from the time they are bit- 
ten. It was further demonstrated that infection 
from cases so produced could be again transmit- 
ted by the above described type of mosquito to 
another person who would, in turn, become in- 
fected with the fever. It was also proved that 
yellow fever could be transmitted by means of 
introduction into the circulation of blood serum 
even after filtering through porcelain filters, which 
latter experiment indicates that the organism is 
exceedingly small, so small, in fact, that it is prob- 
ably beyond the power of any microscope at pres- 
ent in use. It was positively demonstrated that 
yellow fever could not be transmitted by clothing, 
letters, etc., and that, consequently all the old 
143 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

methods of fumigation and disinfection were only 
useful so far as they served to destroy mosqui- 
toes, their young and their eggs." * 

That is the story of a work that has made Cuba 
a healthy land, that has freed the southern part 
of the United States forever from the dread dis- 
ease, that has made the building of the Panama 
Canal a possibility and the Canal Zone healthier 
in death rate per thousand than New York City, 
that has finally rid the earth of yellow fever as 
vaccine rid it of smallpox and typhoid, and as 
the discoveries during the Great War have made 
it possible to check tetanus and typhus and bu- 
bonic plague. 

It was done — the work was done — by the doc- 
tors named and their assistants and the many men 
who took up the burden in other places and car- 
ried on. All honor to them! But the man who 
approved the idea, who took the risk and the re- 
sponsibility and backed up those who worked — 
the man who kept in touch with it day by day and 

* General Wood's Report on the military government of 
Cuba. 

144 



The Administrator 



saw that it was carried through — ^was Leonard 
Wood. 

Simultaneously with these basic administrative 
activities many other hnes of constructive state 
building were inaugurated, under the same admin- 
istrative plan — the plan of the appointment of a 
specialist or a commission of specialists to draw 
up plans and report to the Governor-General who 
then decided and started the actual work of re- 
organization. 

A railroad law was written, and General Wood 
persuaded General Grenville M. Dodge and Sir 
William Van Horn to help him to build much of 
the present railway system of Cuba. Hard mod- 
em roads took the place of the muddy routes al- 
most impassable at certain seasons of the year 
which had been the only means of communication 
throughout the island. Hospitals and charities 
were grouped under a new organization consist- 
ing almost entirely of Cubans which renovated old 
hospitals, built new ones, put children first into 
temporary homes and then did away practically 
with asylums as soon as the destitute children 
could be put out among the Cuban families who 
145 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

took them under a newly made law. Thus, in so 
far as was possible, no child from that time for- 
ward grew up with the stigma of an orphan 
asylum resting upon him or her, but had the 
chance offered to become in time a self-respecting 
inhabitant of a self-respecting community. 

Immense sums were disbursed by the military 
government in public works, harbor improve- 
ments, lighthouses which had flmost ceased to 
exist, post offices and postal systems, telephone 
and telegraph connections, offices and organiza- 
tions and an entirely new system of custom houses 
and quarantine administrations. 

The account of these in detail is the same story 
over and over again — the building of a state from 
bottom to top ; and the administration of this 
state by those people who throughout their entire 
lives had known nothing of the sort — much less 
had any voice in its management. 

Two require special notice because of the tact 
and judgment required in handling them and be- 
cause of the vital importance their consummation 
meant in the final settlement of Cuban difficulties. 

One was the ending of the long standing war 
146 



The Administrator 



between the Spanish Government and the Roman 
Catholic Church upon the question of church prop- 
erty appropriated by Spain. No settlement had 
been made since the concordat of 1861. And 
when General Wood took command of the Island 
the Church came to him and said: "What is the 
United States going to do? Is it war, or peace? 
Give us our property back, or pay us for the use 
of it." 

With infinite wisdom and tact the Governor- 
General appointed judicial commissions to make 
an exhaustive study of the situation which resulted 
in reports showing that the claims of the Church 
were in the main just and fair, and a settlement 
was reached by which the State purchased most 
of the property, and rented for five years the rest, 
so that time should be given for equitable ad- 
justment. This settled for all time a century-old 
trouble which alone would have made the setting 
up of a peaceable and eff^ective government doubt- 
ful. 

The other sound reorganization of a delicate na- 
ture was the action of the Governor-General in 
revising a law which made marriages only legal if 
147 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

performed by a judge and ignoring the church 
ceremony altogether. The changed law recog- 
nized either church or civil marriage and quieted 
the most serious of all family troubles in the Is- 
land. 

Finally a constitutional convention was planned 
and held, at which a constitution of the republi- 
can form based upon that of the United States 
was framed and adapted ; an electoral law for elec- 
tions in the Cuban republic was also adopted; and 
the general administrative IctW of the land was re- 
written and adapted so that the government of 
the Island could be turned over to its inhabitants 
in workable form even though that form was new 
to them and they new to self-government in any 
form. 

Look for a moment at the result of this work. 
In December, 1899, Leonard Wood took command 
of the Island of Cuba. In May, 1902, he turned 
over that Island to its own inhabitants. In 1899 
except for the military work done by the Ameri- 
can Army the Island contained Spaniards who had 
for years been its autocratic rulers and who had 
recently been defeated in a war ; and Cubans who 
148 



The Administrator 



had for years been governed by a tyrant race. 
In 1902 these two century-old hostile groups, 
neither of whom had ever had any real experience 
in modern representative government, received 
their country at the hands of the Americans with 
new laws, with a republican form of government, 
with their own kind for rulers elected by their 
own people, and began an existence that has now 
been running long enough to prove that the work 
was so well performed for them as to make the 
impossible possible — the rotten kingdom, a clean 
republic; the decayed colony, an independent, 
proud democracy. 

It is a piece of work unparalleled in the annals 
of history. And the closing episodes which oc- 
curred in Havana are a witness to the affection 
and pride in which the people held the man who 
had accomplished it, the nation which had or- 
dered it and their Island which was the scene of 
its happening. 

One typical episode occurred on the night of 

President Palma's inauguration ball given to the 

new President and the new Cuban Congress by 

General Wood. Wood took a number of the 

149 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

principal representatives of the new Cuban Con- 
gress to the Spanish Club — the hotbed of the 
Spanish regime — where there was a celebration in 
progress in honor of King Alfonso's birthday. 
The two nationalities fraternized at once under 
the influence of the American Governor-General, 
and all of them, Spaniards and Cubans, drank the 
health of the King of Spain. The President and 
the principal members of the Club then joined 
the party and went to the ball together, where 
in turn all of them, Spaniards and Cubans alike, 
drank the health of the new republic. When 
Wood's family left for Spain the Spanish colony 
in Havana made a request that they should sail 
on the Spanish Royal Mail Steamer in order that 
they might show their appreciation of his work. 
And this ship when she sailed was the first Span- 
ish boat to salute the brand new Cuban flag which 
had just been raised at the entrance to the har- 
bor where for 400 years before that day the flag 
of Spain had waved. 

Another witness to the singular skill with which 
the Governor-General handled the diplomatic re- 
lations of the republic, and which is probably un- 
150 



The Administrator 



equaled anywhere in history, follows. This wit- 
ness has to do with liis work in laying the founda- 
tions of peace between the government of the Is- 
land and the Catholic Church. It is only possi- 
ble here to quote from a few of the documents 
which Wood received not only as acknowledgment 
of his wise and sane policy, but as voluntary signs 
of personal affection and respect which the writers 
held for him when his difficult task was done. 
Monsignor Donatus, Bishop of Havana, wrote 
among other letters three which deserve quoting 
here. They were all voluntary expressions on his 
part. The first, dated at Havana on August 10, 
1900, says in part: 

"To His Excellency, Majo.'-General Leonard 
Wood, U.S.A., Military Governor of Cuba. Hon- 
ored Sir: 

"I saw published in the official Gazetta yester- 
day the decree whereby you give civil effects and 
validity to religious marriages. This act of your 
Excellency corresponds perfectly with the ele- 
vated ideals of justice, fairness and true liberty to 
which aspired the institutions and government of 
151 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

the United States, which you so worthily repre- 
sent in this Island. 

"I gladly take this opportunity of declaring 
that in all my dealings with your Excellency I 
have found you ever disposed to listen to all rea- 
sonable petitions and to guard the sacred rights 
of justice which is the firmest foundation of every 
honored and noble nation. 

"I am moved, therefore, to speak the thanks not 
only of the Catholics but likewise of all others who 
truly love the moral, religious and political well- 
being of the people, and to express to your Ex- 
cellency the sincere feelings and satisfaction and 
gratitude for this decree, which is worthy of a 
wise leader and an able statesman. This too gives 
me confidence that all your decrees and orders will 
continue to be dictated by the same high-minded 
and liberal spirit of justice that while it respects 
the religious sentiment, also guarantees and de- 
fends the rights and liberties of all honest insti- 
tutions. Very respectfully yours, X. Donatus, 
Bishop of Havana." 

The second from the same place, dated Decem- 
ber 11, 1900, says: 

152 



The Administrator 



"All lovers of liberty of conscience, all guardi- 
ans of the sanctity of the home and all who under- 
stand and admire good citizenship must recognize 
in this as in your other order on the same subject, 
the wisdom of a far-seeing statesman and the 
courage of a fearless executive. 

"Thanking you therefore in my own name and 
in the name of the Church I represent, I remain 
with every sentiment of respect and esteem, Very 
sincerely yours, X. Donatus, Bishop of Havana." 

And finally as the Bishop was leaving Havana 
in November, 1901, to become the Bishop of 
Ephesus and proceed to Rome, he wrote: 

"Called by the confidence of the Holy Father 
to a larger and more diflBcult field of action, I feel 
the duty before leaving Cuba to express to your 
Excellency my sentiment of friendship and grati- 
tude, not only for the kindness shown to me, but 
for the fair treatment of the questions with the 
Government of the Island, especially the Marriage 
and Church Property questions. The equity and 
justice which inspired your decisions will devolve 
before all fair-minded people to the honor, not 
153 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

only of you personally, but also to the Govern- 
ment you so worthily represent. I am gratified to 
tell you that I have already expressed the same 
sentiment to the Holy Father in writing and I 
will tell him orally on my visit to Rome. Yours very 
respectfully, X. Donatus, Bishop of Havana." 

An interesting result of this work of Wood's 
in regard to the settlement of the religious ques- 
tions of the Island came later on when he was 
starting on his way to take up his work in the 
Philippines in the form of a delegation of Church 
authorities headed by Archbishop Jones. This 
delegation came to General Wood to say that its 
members proposed to approach the President of 
the United States and suggest that Wood be 
given the same authority to represent church mat- 
ters in the Philippines as he had had in Cuba. 
They added that if this were done, they would 
give him full power to represent the Catholic 
Church as a referee and confer upon him the power 
not only to recommend action in all matters, but 
to settle all matters for the Church himself. 

It is very doubtful if such authority has many 
times in history been given to a Protestant by the 
154 



The Administrator 



Church of Rome, and it marks the extraordinary 
height to which Wood's ability had lifted him in 
the world at large. 

It is hardly to be wondered at that Theodore 
Roosevelt wrote at the time: "Leonard Wood 
four years ago went down to Cuba, has served 
there ever since, has rendered services to that 
country of the kind which if performed three thou- 
sand years ago would have made him a hero mixed 
up with the sun god in various ways; a man who 
devoted his whole life through those four years, 
who thought of nothing else, did nothing else, save 
to try to bring up the standard of political and 
social life in that Island, to teach the people after 
four centuries of misrule that there were such 
things as governmental righteousness and honesty 
and fair play for all men on their merits as men." * 

* Harvard Graduated Magazine. 



JTHE STATESMAN 



VII 

THE STATESMAN 

Meantime, while Wood was carrying on his 
work in Cuba, events of importance to liim and to 
his country were taking place in the United 
States. The popularity of his war record had 
made Roosevelt Governor of New York, and when 
the time came for him to run for a second term the 
Republican organization of the state forced him 
to take the nomination for Vice-President of the 
United States in order to keep him out of the 
gubernatorial field. He objected strongly and 
tried to remain in the state fight, but at the con- 
vention in Philadelphia upon a certain momentous 
occasion Thomas Piatt, then head of the state 
and national Republican organization, is said to 
have remarked to him: 

"Mr. Roosevelt, if you do not desire the vice- 
presidential nomination, there is always the al- 
ternative of retirement to private life." 

In other words party machinery was too strong 
159 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

for him and much against his will he was forced 
to run as second on the McKinlej-Roosevelt 
presidential ticket. 

The Republicans were successful and Roosevelt, 
knowing that there was little for him to do in 
Washington, was planning an extended trip 
through the Southern states to make an exhaus- 
tive study of the negro question. He had indeed 
begun to accumlate material on this subject when 
on September 6, 1901, McKinley was shot at Buf- 
falo. A few days later he died; and Theodore 
Roosevelt became President of the United States. 

For Wood this meant much in the future — much 
of good and something of trouble. Roosevelt was 
his devoted friend and supporter, and upon his 
return to the United States in early 1902 he found 
this devoted friend the head of the nation, himself 
a Brigadier-General of the regular army sched- 
uled to go into regular army work and to live on 
an army officer's pay. In this country there is 
no other procedure possible. In England such a 
man would have been given a title and a large sum 
of money to make it possible for him to keep up 
the position which a man of his abilities and at- 
160 



The Statesman 



tainments should keep up. Here the case is dif- 
ferent. 

He had the alternative of going on, or retiring 
and entering commercial pursuits. Offers looking 
towards the latter contingency were not wanting. 
He was, in fact, asked to take a business position 
which offered him forty thousand a year. Here 
was a large income for a man of forty-two, regu- 
lar work of an interesting sort, security and a 
clear future for himself and his family. Instead, 
he accepted the appointment to the Philippines 
which meant and indeed, as the outcome showed, 
actually involved more than a hundred military 
engagements amongst the natives of the islands in 
many of which he risked his life. 

Here again he took the road of service to his 
country as he had each time the ways divided 
since the day when as a young doctor he entered 
the army. No one but he himself can tell in de- 
tail just the reasons which led to this decision, 
but in the main they were the instinctive desire 
for action, for execution and for the open road, 
which then as now swayed him in all his actions 
and decisions. Then, too, he felt that since 
161 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

Roosevelt was President, criticisms of their rela- 
tions in political circles might readily arise, as 
indeed did occur later; and lest their friendship 
should be misunderstood he took the Philippine 
appointment — applied for it, even — in order that 
being thus out of the country, cause for any such 
occurrences might perhaps be avoided. 

It is always interesting to look back through 
the career of such a man and speculate on the 
chance or wise decision which caused the choice of 
the right road or the left road at such a time. 
Neither Wood nor Roosevelt could possibly know 
or foresee that this decision would furnish the 
former with the material which eventually led to 
his doing more than all the rest of the United 
States put together to start preparation for the 
Great War. Neither of them could have guessed 
that his administration in the Philippines would 
bring out further qualities in Wood which showed 
the statesman as well as the administrator in him. 

What might have happened otherwise is again 

a futile speculation — perhaps something to bring 

him still more before the people of his country, 

perhaps less — yet it may be safely said, judging 

162 



The Statesman 



from history and biography the world over, that 
it is probable no road he might have taken would 
have suppressed Leonard Wood's executive and 
administrative quahties. Indeed the fact that for 
practically thirty years he has been in the army, 
that he is a soldier in every inch of his big body, 
has never even to this day made him a militarist. 
He is and always has been an administrator ; and 
that quality with all that it means would in all 
likelihood have cropped out in whatever profes- 
sion he might have chosen or been forced into by 
circumstances. 

Men of ability are doubtless occasionally kept 
down ; but not as a rule. They rise to the occa- 
sion. And conversely men of small minds, dream- 
ers and theorists looking to the settlement of all 
problems on the instant seldom last long at the 
top although they rise to prominence here and 
there in times of excitement and hysteria such as 
we are passing through to-day. It is only the 
sound common sense of humanity coupled with 
great abihty that stands the test. It is only they 
who keep ever before them the fact that elemen- 
163 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

tal laws do not change, cannot be changed, who 
stand the test and strain of emergency. 

The entire world since the Great War is filled 
with new theories, new plans, new outlooks for all 
cf us. We cannot go back to the old status. Yet 
because we cannot go back there would seem to 
be no reason for our going mad. The wall paper 
has changed — must change. New decorations 
with wonderful and to American ears unpro- 
nounceable names have been displayed before the 
eyes of Europe and America by the advanced ar- 
chitects of the day. But that individual — not to 
mention nations — who becomes fascinated with the 
new colors and designs will suffer horribly in the 
end if, having forgotten to look to the beams of 
his house, he finds it shortly tumbling about his 
ears. Sane vision, clear thinking at critical times 
has saved and wiU save many times again those 
who would fall but for such guidance. 

To-day in this land such men are needed. They 

must come forward, not in haste or with sudden 

panaceas, but with the same old sound common 

sense which has made us wliat we are and will keep 

164. 



The Statesman 



us from becoming what parts of the rest of the 
world have already become. 

In 1902 the situation, while not as acute as to- 
day, had nevertheless its problems to be solved; 
and though we had just finished what in the light 
of history was a short and almost insignificant 
war the country was startled from end to end by 
the discovery of its unpreparedness. As has al- 
ready been said our amazing lack of men and 
equipment for any such occasion had been im- 
pressed upon Wood's mind by personal experience 
and by his own native instinct for the reverse. 

It was of great Interest to him, therefore, to 
receive shortly the appointment to visit Germany 
as an American military observer of the German 
Army maneuvers. And out of this trip he learned 
more thoroughly the lack of foresight in military 
matters in this country and saw more clearly the 
position which we should be in, if such a machine 
as the German Army were pitted against us in- 
stead of the weak and decayed forces of Spain. 

In the course of these maneuvers he met many 
of the greatest miUtary men of Europe. He was 
received and entertained by the German Emperor 
165 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

not only because of his position in the American 
army and as the representative of the United 
States, but as the man who in Cuba had treated 
with such kindness and courtesy German officers 
of a visiting training ship who were ill with the 
Island fevers. He witnessed the grand maneuvers 
of the greatest army the world has ever known. 
But, what in his own belief was of far more im- 
portance, he met and talked with European mili- 
tary experts of world-wide reputation. 

Among these men the most congenial spirit was 
Lord Roberts. The little man of Kandahar, the 
great fighter of Britain's battles, the idol of the 
British public, was then striving to awaken the 
English people and the English government to 
their own unpreparedness. He sought even then 
to show them what an attack by a force like the 
German Army would mean to the British Empire. 
For years he kept at it, lecturing, speaking, cry- 
ing aloud throughout England up to the very day 
when without warning in 1914 his countrymen 
found themselves with a scant two hundred thou- 
sand soldiers confronted by five millions of trained 
Germans. 

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The great fighter, the great preacher, his little 
body filled with patriotism and a great heart, un- 
bosomed to Wood and met a responsive assent in 
Wood's own nature. They discussed from all 
sides the right thing to do. They went over all 
the European systems together with the desire 
in their hearts to find sometliing which should at 
the same time give a nation a force of great size 
that could be quickly put into action and still not 
turn that nation into a huge military machine. 
Neither of them was a militarist. Both felt that 
peace was best preserved by the power to pre- 
serve it. 

Together they seem to have arrived at some 
adaptation of the Swiss system which provides 
that small country with a relatively enormous 
military force without causing the citizens to give 
up their commercial pursuits. At that time it 
is probable that Wood began to formulate the idea 
of universal military training of all male citizens 
between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one while 
they were finishing school and college and before 
they had settled upon their life work. 

At all events the material upon the subject; 
167 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

which he managed to accumulate in the way of 
books, pamphlets, records and so on constitutes 
now one of the main portions of his extensive li- 
brary. And the whole trip was an example in 
his case of what a man can do incidentally — or 
apparently incidentally — while occupied osten- 
sibly with some other work. During his stay in 
Europe he met many statesmen in Germany, 
France and England and absorbed from them all 
he could on the subject that was fast becoming 
his greatest interest. 

Upon his return to the United States the dif- 
ficulties which Taft, the Governor of the Philip- 
pine Islands, was having in trying to bring order 
amongst the Moro, or Moslem, Islands and the 
half savage tribes which inhabited them led 
President Roosevelt to consider the advisability 
of sending some one to undertake this difficult and 
dangerous task. Speaking of it to Wood one 
day the latter said: 

"Why not send me ?" 

Roosevelt immediately referred him to Mr. Root, 
then Secretary of War, with the result that he 
was appointed Governor of Moro Province to do 
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the work there amongst these new wards of the 
United States under different conditions which he 
had already done in Cuba. 

Wood felt very strongly that it would be far 
better for him to be there during the administra- 
tion of Roosevelt in order that their personal re- 
lationship might not be misunderstood. This was 
the more forcibly brought in upon his conscious- 
ness by the occurrence at that time of what is 
known as the Rathbone affair. 

Major Estes G. Rathbone, formerly an assist- 
ant postmaster-general and at this time detailed 
to duties in the newly organized Post OfBce in 
Cuba, had been charged with wastefulness of pub- 
lic moneys and unwarranted expenditure of pub- 
lic funds for personal expenses. He, with certain 
associates, was brought to trial and convicted. 
He was sentenced to a long term of imprisonment. 
It was one of the few cases of malfeasance in of- 
fice which occurred in Cuba during Wood's admin- 
istration and was dealt with by the regular courts 
in the regular manner. 

Nothing further would have come of it in all 
probability had not the extraordinarily close re- 
169 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

latlons of Wood and Roosevelt furnished an ex- 
cuse. The fact that Roosevelt was President of 
the United States and that as such he proposed 
the name of Wood for advancement to Major-Gen- 
eral of Regxilars from Brigadier-General added 
fuel to the flames. The fact that Wood was the 
senior Brigadier and that as such he would nat- 
urally become Maj or-General in regular seniority 
seems to have carried no weight at the time. Even 
then the Rathbone affair would have had no con- 
nection with the matter of this appointment had 
not Major Rathbone possessed personal friends 
high politically in the government of the time, and 
had not the regular army officers looked with dis- 
favor upon the appointment even in regular order 
of a man who had been an army surgeon and who 
was not what is known as a line officer originally. 

All these influences, however, coming together 
at the same time caused an uproar in Congress 
over his appointment which, while it cleared Wood 
entirely, still made a political scandal that hurt 
to the quick the man who had just accomplished 
what he had accomplished in Cuba. 

Wood was charged with conduct unbecoming 
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an officer; that he made an intimate friend of an 
ex-convict in Santiago, and employed him as a 
newspaper correspondent to blacken the charac- 
ter of eminent American officers and advertise him- 
self; that Rathbone was unjustly accused and 
convicted through Wood's direct agency; that 
Wood had been guilty of extravagance; that he 
had accepted while Governor-General presents 
from a gambhng house in Havana, and so on. 

All this evidence and much more was laid before 
the Committee of the Senate on Mihtary Affairs 
and was most thoroughly aired. The result was the 
absolute vindication of Wood, his confirmation as 
Major-General of the Regular Army and a re- 
port which is a part of the records of the Senate 
in which it is written that: . . . "not one of them 
has a better claim, by reason of his past record 
and experience as a commander, than has General 
Wood; and in the opinion of the Committee no 
one has in view of his present rank equal claim to 
his on the ground of merit measured by the con- 
siderations suggested." 

The whole episode thus ended in still greater 
credit to General Wood. It is only interesting 
171 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

and in point here and now because it brings out 
the fact that the man himself never had the sup- 
port of the Washington Army Department men 
until his service in the Philippines, except here and 
there amongst those officers who have served under 
him. Doubtless his extraordinary executive work 
in getting the Rough Riders ready for action and 
his methods which over-rode precedents and de- 
stroyed red tape throughout the whole of the War 
Department of that day had much to do with 
this. That there should follow in so few months 
his remarkable successs in Santiago, his appoint- 
ment as Governor-General of Cuba, his quick and 
successful organization and administration of the 
Island so that it could be turned over to the 
Cubans in such short order — all tended to fan the 
flames of prejudice. Hence when the opportunity 
of the Rathbone affair occurred the flames became 
a veritable conflagration, which, however, burned 
only those who brought the charges and touched 
the character of Wood himself not at all. 

In the meantime early in 1903 he started upon 
his duties in the Philippines. Instead of proceed- 
ing by the usual route through California and 
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over the Pacific to Manila, Wood decided to make 
the voyage the other way round with a definite 
plan for acquiring data upon his new subject and 
relative to his new duties as he went along. 

In Egypt he spent some time with Lord Cromer, 
then just preparing to give up his work there as 
Viceroy. Cromer, like all other persons in execu- 
tive capacities throughout the world, knew well 
all that General Wood had done in Cuba. He 
had a very high appreciation of what had been 
accomplished in the time, because from his own 
experience he knew better than most men what the 
difficulties had been. He took a great liking for 
the quiet, stalwart American and told him that his 
administration in Cuba was one of the finest in 
Colonial history and the best in our generation. 
Later when Lord Cromer was asked to suggest 
some one to succeed himself in Egypt he said 
that unfortunately the best man was unavailable 
since he was an American citizen named Leonard 
Wood. 

He gave him all the facilities for studying the 
government and administration of the British 
protectorate and helped him wherever and when- 
173 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

ever he could. Wood's great interest was the 
study of the way in which men of different and 
conflicting rehgious beliefs were handled, and he 
collected large quantities of books and documents 
to be studied later as he proceeded eastward. No 
man could have asked for higher appreciation than 
was accorded him voluntarily by the able and 
experienced administrator of Egyptian affairs. 

From Cairo he proceeded to India and spent 
sufficient time to accumulate information there. He 
was to govern a Mohammedan population mixed 
up with Confucians, cannibals, headhunters and 
religions of twenty different varieties, and he 
studied as he went along all the methods employed 
in similar situations to preserve order without 
creating religious wars. 

He even made a special journey to Java at the 
invitation of the Dutch government, where the 
Dutch governor gave him all the assistance in his 
power. Here he found the problem more closely 
allied to his own than elsewhere. 

So that on his arrival in Manila he had gath- 
ered information upon most of the problems 
which would shortly confront him from sources 
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The Statesman 



of unquestioned authenticity and from men of 
unquestioned ability. Some friend one night in 
Manila spoke of the large number of books that 
filled the walls of his house and wondered when he 
expected to get time to read them. Wood's answer 
was that he had read them all and only used them 
now as reference books to refresh his memory. 

New as the problems were, therefore, he had by 
the time he began active work as Governor what- 
ever preparation any one could secure for the 
work in hand. 

The Spaniards had failed in their government 
in the Philippines as they had elsewhere. In Min- 
danao and Sulu — the country, or islands, inhab- 
ited by the Moros — they had failed signally be- 
cause of their intolerance of the religious beliefs 
of the people and their careless impatience gen- 
erally towards a colony which from its very nature 
could not produce much money. Furthermore they 
did not send sufficient military forces or sufficiently 
able officers to maintain their supremacy. And 
finally they did not deal with the people through 
the native clergy and priests. Consequently when 
the Americans came in the Moros were united only 
175 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

in their hatred of the white race, placed no confi- 
dence in anything their rulers told them and only 
obeyed white-man-made laws as long as the white 
man was in sight. 

After all a sultan or datu had his position and 
authority which had come down to him through 
generations and his religion which had been taught 
him from birth. He saw no reason why he should 
give up these without a struggle just because some 
other man arrived with a different religion and a 
different form of sultan government. The coun- 
try was such that it was easy to avoid the new 
rulers. Transportation over large parts of the 
southern islands was through jungle and pathless 
forests where even riding a horse was impossible. 
Streams without bridges, settlements without ap- 
proaches except a trail, tropical climates to which 
only the Moros themselves were accustomed spread 
over a land of almost impenetrable jungle. The 
Moros themselves understood such a situation and 
could easily move from one spot to another, one 
island to another, one settlement to another; 
while the army had to fight its way in and then 
fight its way out again. 
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The Statesman 



While the problem of administration was not 
unlike that in Cuba in so far as the organizing 
of courts, law, education, native officials and so 
on went, there were here in Moroland the infinitely 
more difficult and delicate tasks of dealing with 
many different religious laws and customs and 
the hereditary rank and rights of tribal rulers, 
none of which existed in Cuba. 

The quality of statesmanship in Wood which 
idealt with these problems and settled them so that 
from a slave-holding, polygamous, headhunting 
land there arose a self-governing community is of 
the highest order. 

It was put into force in the commander's usual, 
commonplace, thorough way without haste or 
excitement, but where necessary by force of arms 
which required more than a hundred engagements 
and many hard-fought battles. Wood first spent 
some time in Manila going over the situation with 
Mr. Taft. There he learned Taft's wishes and 
views and prepared his mihtary forces. He was 
both military commander and civil governor of 
the Moroland and as such was again an absolute 
autocrat. When he was ready he started directly 
177 



The Career of Leonard Wood 



into the jungle from Zamboanga. The journey 
took him and his staff through forests, over un- 
fordable rivers, across mountain ranges on foot, 
across the straits that separated one island from 
another in dugouts, into forts, into towns, into 
villages and hamlets in a nerve-racking journey 
of over a month without a pause except for neces- 
sary sleep. 

He wanted to see with his own eyes and hear 
with his own ears at first hand what was the con- 
dition of affairs, what was going on, what were 
the different and varying situations in order that 
he might the more correctly and certainly draw 
up plans for the reorganization of the colony. 
In one village he was a military commander issu- 
ing orders ; in another he was a criminal or civil 
judge sitting in session; in another he was a 
listener to the advancement of the plans and the 
religious ceremonials of the sultans or datus of 
the place. 

Naturally all came to see him. He was the 

embodiment of the new conquerors and curiosity 

alone would have brought every one, to say 

nothing of policy which brought those who desired 

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to impress him in order that special favors might 
be expected for themselyes. He was the Great 
White Sultan judged by the standards known to 
their other sultans. 

And the problems were Infinitely varied and in 
most cases entirely new ones to the "doctor from 
Boston." 

But, as in other places, he used his own methods 
in each instance to settle the particular problem, 
always emphasizing the one great fact that if the 
Moros would deal fairly with the Government of 
the United States they would benefit as never 
before, secure fair and just treatment and be 
assured of their right to live in peace. 

Yet when things became a little clogged he 
took immediate steps to clear the situation with 
force if necessary, bat always with diplomacy if 
that could be made to do the job. 

"In Jolo there was a mess. The puffed-up Sul- 
tan, with whom General Bates in 1899 had made 
a treaty by which the Sultan engaged to keep 
order, was away in Singapore having a *time.' 
His brother, the Rajah Mudah, was acting as 
regent. The sub-chiefs and datus were in a great 
179 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

row. The Moros were murdering and robbing, 
all over the island. General Wood led an expedi- 
tion to find out what was the matter. It was not 
a punitive expedition, but rather one meant to let 
the natives see the stalwart soldiers of the United 
States and understand the futility of resisting 
them. The Rajah Mudah was sulky. The Gen- 
eral sent him a polite invitation to visit him in 
camp near Maibun, the Rajah's town. Mudah 
returned word that he was ill. Another invitation 
failed to budge liim. General Wood ordered 
Colonel Scott to pay a call upon the sick Rajah 
and to take along a company of infantry. Colonel 
Scott and Captain Howard found the Rajah 
lounging among his pillows. He greeted them in 
the languid accents of the sick. Solicitous in- 
quiries about the nature of his malady were made. 
The Rajah had a boil. Colonel Scott was deeply 
sympathetic. Would the Rajah object to showing 
his boil. Perhaps the visitors might be able to 
suggest a remedy. The Rajah did not show his 
boil. Captain Howard put his company into line. 
The Rajah sat up with a jerk, and Moros came 
running from all directions to see what was hap- 
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The Statesman 



pening. Colonel Scott very quietly explained that 
the soldiers had been sent as a guard of honor 
to escort the Rajah to the General. If the Rajah 
was quite sure that he was feeling sufficiently 
strong to travel, they would go. 

"Peering through half shut eyes, the Rajah 
Mudah pondered for a moment. Then he an- 
nounced that he felt greatly improved and that 
undoubtedly his condition would be immensely 
helped by a ride in the air. 

"General Wood greeted him cordially and cere- 
moniously. He personally conducted him around 
the camp, pointing out what fine, big men our 
soldiers were, and especially directing his atten- 
tion to the machine guns. Would the Rajah like 
to see the guns in operation? 

"After the guns had mowed down a few trees 
the Rajah's face assumed a thoughtful expression. 
He became enthusiastically friendly."* 

Such methods in time made an impression. Even 
the Moro mind began to absorb the fact that it 
was much better to accept the invitation than to 
undergo what followed any failure to do so, 

* World's Work. 

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The Career of Leonard Wood 

Wood had also to add to his difficulties in the 
beginning the prejudice of army officers he found 
in the islands. The older men over whom he had 
been promoted by President McKinley had no 
love for him. They called him a doctor. He was 
not of the army fraternity. They had heard that 
he had done well, but not by established methods. 
The younger officers took their cue from their 
seniors and so did the enlisted men. It was a diffi- 
cult problem, or series of problems, through which 
he had to steer a careful course. But he did it 
and turned the tide entirely in the other direction. 

He did it by always taking his share of the 
hard work. Object lessons of this sort multiplied 
as time went on. When troops were sent out to 
an engagement Wood went with them and kept 
in the front line. When they camped for the 
night in the jungle he had the same bed — the 
ground. When they had little or nothing to eat, 
he haxi the same. Once when they came out upon 
the beach of one of the islands after a hard trip 
Wood's launch was reported a hundred yards off 
the surf ready with cooling fans, a good mat- 
tressed bed, excellent food and a bath. He told 
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The Statesman 



the orderly that he would stay with the men and 
sent him back to the launch, taking no more notice 
of the matter except to scrape out a new hollow 
in the burning sand in the hope of finding a cooler 
spot to sleep. 

Such episodes repeated again and again soon 
made a vital change of views in regard to the new 
governor and commander. They occurred so regu- 
larly and so often that it appeared true — this 
taking what came along in the day's work with 
the others — not a case of trying to produce effect 
now and then. Mr. R. H. Murray, in his article 
written in 1912, quoted above, speaks of an officer 
who served under Wood at this time and as he 
says quotes him as literally as he can : 

"When Wood first came out in 1903, the army 
in the Philippines didn't know him. There were 
plenty of officers who reviled him as a favorite of 
the White House, and cussed him out for it. 
Pretty soon the army began to realize that he 
was a hustler; that he knew a good deal about 
the soldier's game; that he did things and did 
them right; that, when reveille sounded before 
daybreak, he was usually up and dressed before 
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Tlie Career of Leonard Wood 

us; that, when a man was down and out, and he 
happened to be near, he'd get off his horse and 
see what the matter was and fix the fellow up, if 
he could; that when he gave an order it was a 
sensible one and that he didn't change it after it 
went out; and that he remembered a man who 
did a good piece of work and showed his appre- 
ciation at every chance. 

"Well, the youngsters began to swear by Wood, 
and the old chaps followed, so that from 'cussing 
him out' they began to respect him and then to 
admire and love him. That's the word — love. It's 
the easiest thing in the world to pick a fight out 
there now by saying something against Wood. It 
is always the same when men come in contact with 
him. I don't honestly believe there is a man in 
the department now who wouldn't go to hell and 
back for Leonard Wood." 

It was again much the same story as in Cuba. 
It was not only the personality of the man him- 
self, his personal magnetism, but the quiet sim- 
plicity of his methods backed by knowledge and 
good judgment. It was the absence of doing 
anything for effect, anything of the personal 
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**ego ;" the getting of things done quietly, without 
ferment or conversation. And back of it all the 
absolute certainty of every one who worked with 
or under him that Leonard Wood would do 
exactly what he said he would, even though he 
said it quite quietly only once and even though 
the doing of it meant a military expedition, a 
battle and the death of many a good man who 
perhaps knew nothing of the real reasons. 

Here again space is too limited to permit of an 
account of the work done by Wood which made 
a group of pirates into a relatively law-abiding 
community. Yet some attempt to picture the 
situation is necessary in order to give a slight 
idea of what the problem was. 

It should be borne in mind that the country 
over which he was made Governor-General con- 
sisted of two-thirds of the Island of Mindanao 
and the Sulu Archipelago — a long chain of large 
and small islands extending almost to Borneo. 
The inhabitants were principally Mohammedans, 
known to the Spaniards as Moros. Along the 
coast of Mindanao were scattered small Philip- 
pine settlements — Christian Fihpinos. Widely 
185 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

separated back in the islands were numerous tribes 
speaking different dialects. In appearance they 
were not unlike the Diacs of Borneo. Some of 
them were headhunters. Among some of them 
cannibalism still existed in the form of religious 
ceremonies. 

The Moros were the masters of aU the seas in 
this vicinity. They were the old Malay pirates 
so well known in books of travel. The Spaniards 
had waged intermittent war against them since 
early in 1600, but they never effectively conquered 
them. They would send down a large expedition, 
win a victory and withdraw. This procedure, 
however, made little or no impression on the 
pirates, who shortly returned to their trade when 
the Spanish victors had returned home. 

The Moros were all fanatical Mohammedans, in- 
tolerant of Christians or Christian influence, and 
when the Spaniards arrived in Manila about 1537 
they dominated all the seas about the Philippine 
Islands. They were armed with all kinds of 
firearms, ranging from the old Queen Bess muzzle- 
loader to the most modern rifles. Their artillery 
ranged from the broadside guns of battleships of 
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the 18th Century to a smaller cannon of bronze, 
made principally in Borneo. They were bold, 
adventurous sailors, slave traders and slave hunt- 
ers and successfully terrorized the hill tribes. 
Indeed, they were greatly feared along- the coast 
of Mindanao. 

Early in the American occupation a treaty had 
been made with the Sultan of Sulu, who claimed 
the headship of Moros from the Island of Sulu 
northward to the great Island of Mindanao. In 
Mindanao there were different sultans who claimed 
headships in their own districts, and foremost 
amongst these was Datu Ali, who had waged a 
long and successful war with the Spaniards. 

Here then was a difficult problem: to establish 
civil government among these wandering hill 
tribes, Filipino settlements, and piratical Mo- 
hammedan groups, each fearing and hating the 
other. General Wood's first task as he conceived 
it was to stop slave-trading and establish relations 
of tolerance, if not friendship, between the Filip- 
inos and the Moros on the one hand and be- 
tween the Moros and the hill tribes on the other; 
to stop the Christian Filipinos from imposing 
187 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

on the hill tribes ; and to begin some method for 
substituting respect for law and order, for gov- 
ernment and authority in the place of terror and 
hatred. The ending of the slave trade resulted 
in many heavy, long-drawn-out fights with the 
principal Moro bands. The Sultan of Sulu had 
not lived up to the Bates Treaty and he had to 
be deposed, therefore, as a sovereign in Sulu. 

The next step was to organize some form of 
government that would fit the situation. To start 
this Wood divided the entire Moro area, including 
the islands, into districts and appointed American 
officers of experience and ability as governors of 
the districts. 

He then visited Borneo and studied carefully 
the laws and regulations under which that char- 
tered colony governed the Malays within its 
borders. The policy laid down by him for the 
district governors was to stop slave-trading and 
the taking of life and property at once ; to estab- 
lish next friendly relations between the people 
living on the coast and the timid tribes up in the 
hills ; to build up commerce on a fair basis ; to 
open up trails and lines of communication between 
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villages; to assure to every one, no matter what 
his religion, a fair deal. He also laid great stress 
on the necessity of bringing the headmen of the 
different tribes into contact with the district gov- 
ernors and of doing all that could be done to 
build up and increase commerce. 

At the same time the new and energetic Gov- 
ernor-General instituted a strong policy to stop 
forever the inhuman practices and customs highly 
repugnant to what Americans considered humane 
conduct. Every effort was made to insure better 
treatment of women, who up to that time had been 
nothing more nor less than chattels. On the sea- 
coast trading stations were built and put in charge 
of men who spoke the dialect of the wild people. 
At these stations there was always a provincial 
agent who had authority to see that the hill people 
got fair prices for their products and just treat- 
ment from the Malays. Little by little as a result 
of this wise and sane policy they were all induced 
to come to the stations and make their head- 
quarters there during the trading period. In 
former times they had been accustomed to bring 
down their heavy loads of jungle products on their 
189 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

shoulders and rather than stay in the neighbor- 
hood of the pirates over night they would sell 
their goods for anything they could get and hurry 
up into the hills again before dark. Moro, Fili- 
pino and Chinese traders had for centuries sys- 
tematically robbed them. Money was of little 
use to them and therefore all trading was by 
barter. It was a long campaign of education 
which Wood instituted to build up confidence 
amongst these timid people, and he sent young 
American officers among them, traveling often- 
times hundreds of miles on foot and practically 
without any protection to help them and give 
them confidence. 

Little by little confidence was built up; great 
peace meetings were arranged among the different 
tribes ; old grudges were wiped out ; scores were 
balanced and old feuds settled. It took time and 
brains and painstaking patience, but it was done 
and done weU. 

At the same time, taking a leaf from his own 

Cuban notebook. Wood started schools in the 

Filipino villages and took steps to do the 

same among the Moros. It was very difficult to 

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find teachers who would be received by these Mos- 
lems. It was at first almost impossible to get 
them to send their children to school at all. 
Nothing but time and sound, honest methods in 
dealing with these people made all or any of this 
possible. 

Patrol boats were put on duty in the waters 
about the islands. Simultaneous with this build- 
ing up went the organization of the customs 
service, since the province had to be entirely self- 
supporting. Native people from among the 
Moros and Filipinos were organized into what 
was called the constabulary. Every effort was 
made to turn the attention of the people from 
irregular and piratical activities to the activities 
of commerce. School laws were put in force, 
written in terms to meet the situation. Increased 
cultivation of new land, cultivation of cocoanuts, 
cocoa, and various local products, including hemp, 
was encouraged by exempting it from taxation 
provided certain amounts of useful crops were 
planted thereon. 

Communications by land and water were built 
up as fast as possible. After a time taxation was 
191 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

imposed very gradually in the form of a cedula, 
or poll tax. The money so collected was spent so 
far as possible in the district where it was collected. 
The headmen of the tribes and sub-tribes were 
made officials of the province and given a baldric 
bearing a brass shield with the seal of the prov- 
ince. In time they were given certain police 
authority for the maintenance of order. If the 
local headman could not handle the situation, the 
local constabulary was called in. If they in turn 
were not sufficient, then the troops were sent into 
the area. 

A free man's life was worth fifty-two dollars 
and a half in gold; a male slave one-half this 
amount; a free woman was worth as much as a 
male slave ; a female slave half as much as a male 
slave, and a modern rifle about two hundred dol- 
lars in gold. 

As the simple processes of law came to be bet- 
ter understood natives were encouraged to appeal 
from the tribal to the district court, consisting 
of the district governor and the local priests or 
headmen, who advised the former upon tribal cus- 
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toms and scales of punishment, in order that no 
injustice should be done to any one. 

Gradually appeals were taken from the district 
courts to the regular insular courts, which were 
represented by itinerant judges of the first in- 
stance. The latter belonged to the regular Philip- 
pine judiciary an4 were at this time all Americans. 
Women were given equal status before the law 
and the rights of property were safeguarded. 

After the first hard fighting the need for the use 
of troops gradually diminished and more and 
more of the policing work was done by the native 
constabulary. The wildest regions became prac- 
tically safe. 

After the districts were in working order mu- 
nicipalities and townships were established and 
the framework of civic organization begun. The 
Mohammedan rehgion was left undisturbed. Reli- 
gious freedom was guaranteed to both Moham- 
medans and Christians. In addition to the Catholic 
missionaries who had been working there for hun- 
dreds of years, missionaries of other denomina- 
tions commenced to take active interest in the 
situation. The revenue was sufficient to maintain 
193 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

the province in good shape and there was a con- 
siderable amount of money in reserve. 

Thus in three years, with the knowledge he had 
acquired in Cuba supplemented by his visits and 
study amongst the colonies of other nations where 
similar problems existed, with his extraordinary 
energy and capacity for working through 
innumerable subordinates, Leonard Wood again 
built up a community out of nothing but land 
and human beings. But in the Philippine instance 
he built up a community largely governing itself 
upon a system of laws stiU in force — though three 
governors have succeeded him — from a hopeless 
mass of Christian Filipinos, Chinese traders, 
Malay pirates, Mohammedans, cannibals and 
feudal tribes. 

It was a remarkable instance of state building, 
which following upon the Cuban episodes, stands 
out as the greatest achievement any man has 
accomplished in Colonial history. 

It is impossible to state the relative importance 

of this work without appearing to overdo it. Yet 

if we could but collect the tributes that have been 

paid to Wood upon its accomplishment they 

194 



The Statesman 



would make a volume. Richard Olney wrote: 
". . . to congratulate you personally on the most 
successful and deservedly successful career, 
whether as soldier or public man of any sort, that 
the Spanish War and its consequences have 
brought to the front." John Hay, then Secretary 
of State, wrote Wood a note "with sincere con- 
gratulations on the approaching fruition of all 
your splendid work for the regeneration of Cuba," 
and Senator Piatt, of Connecticut, wrote of his 
*'admiration for your administration under diffi- 
culties greater I think than have ever had to be 
encountered by any one man in reconstruction 
work." So the record of two statesmenlike and 
administrative works stands to this day as a wit- 
ness of Wood's qualities. 

In 1905 after a visit to the United States he 
returned to the islands and became commander-in- 
chief of the American forces in the Philippines, 
General Bliss taking his place as Governor of the 
Moros, who were now established under a basic 
form of government and procedure which Wood 
had inaugurated. 

By 1908 this work was practically completed 
195 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

and the procedure laid out for the future rule of 
that part of the Philippines. At that time Gen- 
eral Wood was transferred to Governor's Island 
in New York Harbo^ as Commander of the De- 
partment of the East, strangely enough the first 
command he had held within the United States 
since the Geronimo days in the Southwest. 

There followed in the next six years a diplomatic 
mission as special Ambassador to the Argentine 
Republic upon the occasion of the centenary of 
Argentina, where he met and talked with General 
von der Goltz, the German officer, who had so 
much to do with the Great War later. From this 
meeting Wood absorbed more of the necessity for 
universal military training and more of the aver- 
sion to a standing army such as existed in Ger- 
many. After this mission he became the head 
of the American military forces under the Presi- 
dent of the United States and for four years 
held the position of Chief of Staff. 

Thus beginning his army life in 1886 as an 

army surgeon he rose in twenty-two years to the 

highest position in the regular army that any 

one can hold. That, in a sense, closes a certain 

196 



The Statesman 



period in General Wood's career. For when in 
1914 he was again made Commander of the De- 
partment of the East he had already started upon 
his campaign of national preparation which had 
been growing and growing in his mind as he lived 
and served his own nation and observed and 
studied other nations. The knowledge he had 
acquired in the four quarters of the earth showed 
to him conclusively that a nation must be ready 
to resist attack in order to live in peace, and yet 
that that nation must not spend all its wealth and 
time and brains in building up a military machine. 
In a strange way the attitude of this New Eng- 
land "Mayflower" descendant resembled the at- 
titude of his own native Cape Cod, which stands 
at the outposts of New England with its clenched 
fist ready and prepared, yet which lives on quietly 
in the lives of its inhabitants who proceed in peace 
with their commercial occupations and their fam- 
ily existence. 



THE PATRIOT 



VIII 

THE PATRIOT 

"There are many things man cannot buy and 
one of them is time. It takes time to organize 
and prepare. Time will only be found in periods 
of peace. Modern war gives no time for prepara- 
tion. Its approach is that of the avalanche and 
not of the glacier. 

"We must remember that this training is not 
a training for war alone. It really is a training 
for life, a training for citizenship in time of peace. 

"We must remember that it is better to be 
prepared for war and not have it, then to have 
war and not to be prepared for it." 

Such sentiments quoted from General Wood's 
many speeches and writings might be continued 
until they alone made a volume — a book of the 
Creed of the Patriot. For in his crusade up and 
down our land for the last six years he has 
developed an unsuspected ability for epigrammatic 
phraseology, for stating in concise, homely lan- 
201 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

guage the principle that no one in any successful 
operation has failed to get ready. This was un- 
suspected in him, because up to 1913 he had had 
little to say outside of his official reports. His 
motto of doing the thing without talking about it 
had been followed to the letter by himself. 

When he finally arrived at a position which was 
important and powerful enough to give him an 
opportunity for putting his beliefs into effect, 
when he furthermore arrived at a point where 
there was not the immediate necessity for feeding 
a starving people, or fighting a hostile military 
force, or reorganizing a tumbled-down state, or 
doing any of the things demanding immediate 
action with which he had been employed during 
most of his life — then with characteristic energy 
he did begin. Time could not be bought by him 
any more than it could be by others and his 
work of preparednesss had to await a period of 
peace when the time was at hand. This period 
having arrived in 1912 and 1913 he found that 
in order to produce any impression, to get action 
upon this plan, he must not only have a high and 
powerful position but he must awaken the public 
202 



The Patriot 



to its importance before he could expect legislative 
or departmental action. Hence the volume of the 
Creed of the Patriot. 

With his accustomed energy therefore he 
started upon a campaign of writing, speaking and 
promoting in all ways open to him to bring this 
new plan before the people of this country and 
in doing so he developed the hitherto unsuspected 
qualities of ? speaker of the highest, because the 
simplest and most homely order. 

To him there was nothing new in the plan of 
preparedness for the nation. He might have said 
to himself in 1913: "I have found that in order 
to be a doctor a young man must study so many 
years ; in order to fight Apache Indians success- 
fully a man must train for a physical condition 
that permits him to walk and ride and live harder 
than his already trained opponents, that he must 
train soldiers for that particular job, must train 
and care for horses to cover that particular coun- 
try. I have found by sad experience that to have 
a regiment of Rough Riders in proper condition 
to fight Spaniards in Cuba the men must be taught 
by long training to understand military principles, 
203 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

subordination to military rule of procedure, the 
use of guns and animals and the laws and tactics 
of military action in the field; that these men 
must be taught to take care of themselves in the 
open, that ammunition and equipment must be at 
hand and in use. I have found that in order to 
produce order in a community where there is no 
order, health in a land where there is only sickness, 
happiness amongst a people where there is only 
misery and fear and worry — in order to do all 
this laws must be made and respected, people must 
learn that they owe something to their state and 
that they are responsible for honest care, adminis- 
tration and thoughtfulness of those who look to 
them as they look to their state. I have found 
that where nothing but force will do the trick, 
force must be prepared and ready in advance. I 
have seen innocent persons go under because they 
were not ready to offset depredations. I have 
seen nations injured and destroyed because they 
were not ready to resist force, whether that force 
were used in a just or an unjust cause. And now 
I have arrived at the place where I can prove this 
to a nation instead of to a military platoon, or a 
204 




THE PATRIOT 



The Patriot 



military staff, or a few Cuban or Philippine offi- 
cials." 

He might have said all this to himself — doubt- 
less has done so many, many times with much 
more to the same effect — but the outcome is a 
witness of the fact that he has from a long and 
active life as fighter, soldier, organizer, adminis- 
trator, diplomat and statesman in the West, the 
South, in Europe, in Asia, in Cuba, in the Philip- 
pines, in South America, in Washington — in most 
parts of the earth — learned again and again that 
nothing can be really done on the spur of the 
moment, that everybody must prepare from school 
days to death. And in 1913 he had his first real 
opportunity to preach this nationally to all the 
people of his own native land. 

That within a year of that time prepared Ger- 
many should have upset the world and found the 
British Empire, the French Republic and the 
Italian Kingdom unprepared — to say nothing of 
the United States — may have been one of the acci- 
dents — strokes of fortune — that some people say 
have made General Wood. But it would seem 
that the only thing this Great War did in this 
205 



The Career of Leonard JVood 

connection was to prove by a terrific example that 
Wood and those with him were right and that those 
who were against him were wrong. 

If the war had not come, it would have taken 
longer to awaken this country to the facts and it 
would have delayed perhaps the growth of General 
Wood's name as that of a national and interna- 
tional character of highest importance. But it 
would not have changed the truth of his Creed — 
or rather the creed of which he has become the 
great protagonist. Nor does the fact that the 
war did come when it did give any ground for 
making Wood one of the greatest citizens of our 
country to-day because he preaches preparedness. 
General Wood stands at the forefront of the 
leaders in America at this time because of his 
own personal make-up and character and because 
of the amazing variety and extent of his services 
to his country which are written upon every page 
of its history during the last thirty years. It is 
the variety of things done which puts him in his 
present position, just as it is the variety of high 
qualities that has made the great men of all times 
great. King David was not only the greatest 
206 



The Patriot 



general of his time. He was one of the greatest 
administrators of all time and perhaps the great- 
est poet that ever lived. Washington was not 
only a fighter of the highest order. He was one 
of the great generals of history ; and a statesman 
and ruler of a higher order still. 

It might very aptly be said, therefore, that 
General Wood's campaign for national prepared- 
ness was only the accomplishment of a task for 
which he had all his life been preparing himself. 

Upon his return trip from the Philippines in 
1908 he had come by the way of Europe studying 
always military systems. There was a short stop 
in Ceylon, in Singapore, in Egypt, in Malta and 
Gibraltar and a summer spent in Switzerland, os- 
tensibly for health recuperation after the tropical 
life in Moroland and Manila. At the same time 
this gave opportunity for a closer study of the 
Swiss system which with an admixture of the 
Australian system furnished the basis for the 
training camps afterwards inaugurated by him 
here. 

At the same time he had the opportunity by 
invitation of seeing the German and French 
207 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

armies mobilized at the time of the Bosnia-Herze- 
govina episode when all Europe was on the verge 
of war. The German army of maneuver was at 
Saarbriicken — ready. Practically the whole of 
the French army of maneuver was on the Loire — 
ready. He saw one immediately after the other — 
less than two days apart. Mr. White, then Amer- 
ican Ambassador to France, asked him what he 
thought of the French army and his answer was 
that despite the fame of the German military ma- 
chine France in the next war would surprise the 
world by the fighting effectiveness of her forces. 
He based this conclusion on the relation of officers 
and men and the discipline founded on respect and 
confidence rather than fear of officers. 

Then followed the centenary mission to the 
Argentine and a couple of years as Chief of Staff 
of the American army before he could effectively 
begin his campaign. 

The first gun was a letter sent out by Wood 
under permission of the Secretary of War which 
proposed to many presidents of colleges and uni- 
versities in the United States the establishment 
of several experimental military training camps 
208 



The Patriot 



for students. These camps were to be placed one 
on the historic field of Gettysburg and the other 
at the Presidio of Monterey, California. The 
former opened on July 7th and closed on August 
15th, and the latter extended from July 1st to 
August 8th. In all 222 students took this train- 
ing, 159 at Gettysburg and 63 in Monterey. 

It was the first trial, and it was a very small 
aid insignificant response. Indeed it gives a good 
idea of the importance in which military prepared- 
ness was held in this country at that moment — ■ 
100,000,000 inhabitants; 222 volunteers. 

Those were the days when the people of this 
land and many others were hard at work upon 
commercial pursuits and when for amusement the 
world and his wife danced tango to ragtime music. 
So-called alarmists cried "Look out for war !" 
Major Du Maurier of the British army wrote a 
play called "An Englishman's Home," which 
startled and puzzled Englishmen for a while, but 
could not carry an audience for one week in this 
country. Nobody took any interest in what his 
neighbor was doing, to say nothing of what Ger- 
many or any other countries were planning. 
209 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

Yet Wood was not discouraged. He was started 
on a long campaign and he knew he had to prepare 
to prepare. Furthermore the men in the univer- 
sities who could see ahead came forward in his 
support and in support of the idea. Four years 
later President Drinker of Lehigh University 
wrote of the amazing success of the movement: 
"We owe it largely to Major-General Wood's far- 
sightedness as a man of affairs and to his great 
qualities as a soldier and patriot, that our country 
was awakened to the need of preparedness, and 
this beginning of mihtary training in our youth 
was due wholly to his initiative." * 

Small as the beginning was it was a plant with 
the germ of strength in it, since at this first camp 
in Gettysburg the members formed then in 1913 
the Society of the National Reserve Corps of the 
United States. Wood at once cooperated with 
this slender offshoot and gave it all the support in 
his power. He sent letters as Chief of Staff of 
the Regular Army to college presidents at the 
same time that the president of the new Corps did 
«o — both suggesting an advisory committee to 

* National Service Magazine. 

210 



The Patriot 



assist the government in the encouragement and 
practical advancement of the training camp idea. 
This committee was formed and Presidents Hibbcn 
of Princeton and Drinker of Lehigh were elected 
president and secretary. The committee with 
these officers in charge gave assistance to Wood in 
his organizing work so that out of the small be- 
ginnings in the two camps an enormous organiza- 
tion arose which trained tens of thousands of 
young men to be officers and made the immense ex- 
pansion of the little American army to 4,000,000 
soldiers possible. 

Pushing always quietly but unremittingly ahead 
Wood helped these officers to increase the camps 
from two to four in the summer of 1914 — in Ver- 
mont, Michigan, North Carolina and California — 
with a total attendance of 667 students. 

Then came the Great War and the beginning 
of the work on a large scale. From college stu- 
dents, who reported on the interest and pleasure 
which they got out of the summer camp, the life in 
the open and the military instruction afforded by 
regular army men, the movement extended to busi- 
ness men, lawyers, preachers and so on. Wood 
211 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

opened the Plattsburg camp on Lake Champlain to 
the latter and started the first business man's camp. 
Each man paid his own railway fares, his own living 
expenses while in camp and bought his uniform and 
equipment, except arms, with his own money. 

That year (1915) 3,406 men attended the five 
camps. In 1916 six camps were opened and 16,139 
men attended them. At the close of the first 
Plattsburg camp the business men formed an or- 
ganization for furthering and extending this train- 
ing just as the college men had done at Gettysburg 
two years before. And in 1916 these two organi- 
zations consolidated and organized the present 
Military Training Camps Association of the 
United States. 

All through this period, taking advantage of 
the European war, drawing lessons from the tragic 
happenings just across the Atlantic, Wood went 
about the country, as little "Bobs" of Kandahar 
had previously done in England, speaking in halls, 
in camps, in churches, at clubs, at festivals, on 
special and unspecial occasions of all kinds. He 
drove home the subject which he knew so well and 
others knew hardly at all. He met all comers of 
212 



The Patriot 



every grade in arguments and debates — those who 
were constitutional objectors, pacifists, people 
who thought arbitration much more effective, peo- 
ple too proud to fight or too busy to get ready — 
all comers of all kinds. And the Great War day 
by day helped him. He spent his summers going 
from one camp to another, traveling all over the 
United States. 

At six in the morning he would appear in one 
of them ready for inspection, and any day any- 
where where there was a camp one might see him in 
the early morning sunshine, or the early morning 
rain striding up one company street and down an- 
other followed by new and old officers, peering into 
this dog tent and that kitchen, examining this 
man's rifle and that man's kit, praising, criticizing 
and jamming enthusiasm in two hours into a group 
of a thousand men in a manner they knew not how, 
nor clearly understood. It was just what he had 
done in Cuba, just what he had done in the Philip- 
pines where he had organized drilling, athletic and 
condition-of-equipment competitions in each com- 
pany, each regiment, each brigade, each division — 
one pitted against another, all at it hot and heavy ; 
213 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

not because Wood came along and looked them 
over, but because when he did look tliem over he 
could spot any weakness in any part of the work 
with unerring certainty — not alone because he 
could spot any weakness, but because he knew a 
good point when he saw it and gave credit where 
credit was due. 

It is perhaps not out of place here to look back 
in the light of events which occurred afterwards 
and are now a part of history and secure an esti- 
mate of what this work did for this country in 
awakening the people to a sense of the critical 
situation, to prepare an army which should do its 
part in the world war, to bring that army into 
line in France at what seems to have been a critical 
moment and to help bring the war itself to a suc- 
cessful conclusion in conjuction with the Allied 
armies which had held on so lo:ig against such ter- 
rific odds. 

The purpose of the camps and what they will 
lead to in time of peace and did lead to in time 
of war is perhaps best shown in one of General 
Wood's statements: "The ultimate object sought 
is not in any way one of military aggrandizement, 
214 



The Patriot 



but to provide in some degree a means of meeting 
a vital need confronting us as a peaceful and un- 
military people, in order to preserve the desired 
peace and prosperity through the only safe pre- 
caution, vizi. : more thorough preparation and 
equipment to resist any effort to break the 
peace." 

That at a time when there was no European 
War in sight. 

Now consider General Pershing's report of 
Nov. 21, 1918— after the close of the war. The 
first American air force using American aero- 
planes went into action in France, that is to say 
in the war, in August, 1918 — 16 months after the 
declaration of war by the United States and four 
years after the beginning of the war itself. Dur- 
ing the entire time that the United States was in 
the war, a little over 19 months, not one single 
American field gun was fired at the enemy and only 
109 had been received in Europe at all. No Amer- 
ican tank was ever used against the enemy in the 
whole war. Yet a month or six weeks after the 
declaration of war troops began to go to Europe 
and at its close in November, 1918, the army con- 
215 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

sisted of 3,700,000 men, of whom more than 
203,000 were newly made officers. Half of this 
force at least got over to the other side of the 
Atlantic and at least half of them took part in the 
fighting at one time or another of the 19 months. 

One would have said at the outset that a com- 
mercial nation like the United States, filled with 
factories, mechanics and mechanically inclined 
brains, could and would have made guns and aero- 
planes and uniforms far quicker than it made 
soldiers and officers. Yet such was not the case. 

A French officer here in America at that time 
studying American mobilization said: 

"I knew you recruited over 3,500,000 men in 
19 months. That is very good, but not so diffi- 
cult. But I am told also that although you had 
no officers' reserve to start with you somehow 
found 200,000 new officers, most of them compe- 
tent. That is what is astonishing and what was 
impossible. Tell me how that was done."* 

There is only the one answer, that the officers' 
training camps started in 1913 by Leonard Wood 
and fostered by liim and the people of this nation 

* National Magazine. 

216 



The Patriot 



who then and later agreed with him made the im- 
possible possible and made the new, raw army 
effective and in time. It was what came to be 
known as the "Plattsburg Idea;" which, getting 
really going first in May 15, 1917, as a regular 
part of the United States mobilization, did its 
work before arms and ammunition were ready, 
before uniforms could be had, before camps had 
been even laid out and before the first draft had 
been taken. At that time 40,000 selected men 
were in training for officers' positions in sixteen 
camps. That is to say, in 40 days 150,000 appli- 
cations had been received, 100,000 men examined 
and 40,000 passed as fit and ready for training. 

It was the work in 1913, 1914, 1915 and 1916. 
It was the Plattsburg idea adapted to war condi- 
tions. Without it the situation regarding men 
might easily have been the same as the situation 
regarding guns, aeroplanes and uniforms. 

Plattsburg, being in New York State, naturally 
became the type of camp, since in 1914 Wood, 
having been relieved of his position as Chief of 
Staff, was detailed to command the Department 
of the East with his headquarters on Governor's 
217 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

Island in New York Harbor. He no sooner took 
up this new work than the Department of the 
East, where fifty-six per cent, of the National 
Guard of the whole country was included, became 
a seething office of energy and work. In so far 
as the training camp idea went this energy was 
centered in Plattsburg. 

At the same time General Wood inaugurated 
the Massachusetts National Guard Maneuvers — 
the first of their kind held in this country — and 
added a water attack on Boston. He also as- 
sisted Governor Whitman in putting through the 
New York State Legislature the bills creating 
the State Military Training Commission, under 
whose management all boys between the ages of 
sixteen and eighteen undergo a simple but effec- 
tive training in the rudiments of military tactics 
and receive the athletic training of a short camp 
life each year — all involving the inculcation of 
the principles of discipline, of order and of self 
care. 

Thus the history of the way in which the Gov- 
ernment of the United States, when war was 
eventually declared, secured its officers is told. 
218 



The Patriot 



One might go into detail, but the main facts are 
not altered by any amount of detail. They stand 
out clearly — the awakening of our land in time 
by the energy and patriotic spirit of one man, 
supplemented by the untold amount of work ac- 
complished at his suggestion by thousands of 
patriotic American citizens. 

And in the midst of this work before war was 
declared General Wood, as a part of his plan of 
preparedness, asked some ten or twelve men to 
come to Plattsburg at different times to speak to 
the student oificers. Among these men he included 
the two living ex-presidents of the United States 
— Mr. Taft and Colonel Roosevelt. He first sub- 
mitted the list of speakers to the War Depart- 
ment so that the Department might eliminate any 
one of them who for any reason should appear to 
be undesirable. 

After two weeks, having had no reply, he sent 
out the invitations and from time to time these 
speakers came and addressed the members of the 
different camps. 

Roosevelt on his arrival at Plattsburg handed to 
Wood the speech he proposed to deliver; and 
219 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

in view of the known critical attitude which the 
former took towards the administration Wood 
asked two other army ofBcers to go over the pro- 
posed speech with him and help him to eliminate 
anything which might be questioned upon such an 
occasion. The address was delivered at about five 
o'clock in the afternoon at the camp and when 
it was finished Roosevelt was heartily congratu- 
lated personally by many men of both political 
parties, among them two distinguished Democrats 
— John Mitchel, Mayor of New York, and Dudley 
Field Malone, Collector of the Port of New York. 

After dinner Roosevelt left in the evening to 
go into the city of Plattsburg, a mile or two away 
from the camp, to take the midnight train for New 
York. As he stood on the platform of the rail- 
way station some time after eleven in the evening 
he was interviewed by the newspaper reporters. 
No military person was present. What he said 
was given out on territory not under military 
jurisdiction and it had nothing to do with the 
Plattsburg speech. Roosevelt spoke to the news- 
paper men in his usual forcible fashion: 

"In the course of his speech he remarked that 
220 



TJw Patriot 



for thirteen months the United States had played 
an ignoble part among the nations, had tamely 
submitted to seeing the weak, whom we had cove- 
nanted to protect, wronged; had seen our men, 
women and children murdered on the high seas 
*without action on our part,' and had used elocu- 
tion as a substitute for action. 'Reliance upon 
high sounding words unbacked by deeds,' said he, 
*is proof of a mind that dwells only in the realm 
of shadow and of sham.' Under the Hague Con- 
vention it was our duty to prevent, and, if not to 
prevent, then to undo, the hideous wrong that was 
done in Belgium, but we had shirked this duty. 
He denounced hyphenated Americans, profes- 
sional pacifists and those who would substitute 
arbitration treaties for an army, or the plati- 
tudes of peace congresses for military prepared- 
ness." 

The next day Wood received a telegraphic rep- 
rimand from the Government in Washington. 
"In this telegram of disapproval. Secretary Gar- 
rison said it was difficult to conceive of anything 
which could have a more detrimental effect than 
such an incident. The camp, held under the Gov- 
221 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

eminent auspices, was conveying its own impres- 
sive lesson in its practical and successful operation 
and results. 'No opportunity should have been 
furnished to any one to present to the men any 
matter except that which was essential to the 
necessary training they were to receive. Any- 
thing else could only have the effect of distracting 
attention from the real nature of the experiment, 
diverting consideration to issues which excite 
controversy, antagonism and ill-feeling, and 
thereby impairing, if not destroying, what other- 
wise would have been so effective.' General Wood 
replied, as follows : 'Your telegram received, and 
the policy laid down will be rigidly adhered to.' "* 
* The Independent. 



THE GREAT WAR 



IX 

THE GREAT WAR 

On April 6, 1917, war having been that week 
declared by the United States against Germany, 
Major-General Leonard Wood, ranking officer in 
the United States Army — that is to say, the man 
occupying the senior position in our army — 
being then in sound health of mind and body and 
fifty-six years of age, wrote and personally de- 
livered two identical letters, one to the Adjutant- 
General of the Army and the other to the Chief of 
Staff, requesting assignment for military service 
abroad. 

No acknowledgment or reply was ever received 
from either source. 

Early in April he received notice that the De- 
partment of the East of which he was then com- 
mander was abolished and in its place three new 
and smaller departments created, in spite of 
vigorous protests by several Governors of Atlantic 
States. He was offered any one of the following 
225 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

three military positions that he might select — the 
Philippines, Hawaii or the "less important post" 
at Charleston, South Carolina. 

He at once selected the post at Charleston. 

On May 12th he proceeded to Charleston and 
began the organization of the Southeastern De- 
partment. In the months immediately following 
he had selected and laid out eleven large training 
camps and had taken charge of the supervision of 
three officers' training camps, one at Oglethorpe, 
one at Atlanta and one at Little Rock. 

On August 26th he received orders to proceed 
to Camp Funston in Kansas to command the can- 
tonment there and train for service a division of 
national troops designated as the 89th Division. 

Towards the end of the year he was ordered to 
proceed to Europe to observe the military opera- 
tions of the war. Leaving Camp Funston the day 
before Thanksgiving, he landed in Liverpool on 
Christmas Day, 1917. In London he called by 
invitation upon General Robertson, the British 
Chief of Staff, and upon his old friend, Sir John 
French. He then proceeded to Paris on Decem- 
ber 31, and between January 2nd and 14<th, 1918, 



The Great War 



went over the British front with Generals Cator 
and Rawlinson. On the 16th he was at Soissons 
with the French. 

For the next few days the examination of the 
French front continued at and near the Chemin 
des Dames sector. 

On January 27th he went with some French of- 
ficers and men and a number of American of- 
ficers to look into the work of the 6th French 
army training school, where artillery practice 
was in progress at Fere-en-Tardenois. He was 
standing behind a mortar, the center man of the 
five officers watching the gun crew fire the mortar, 
when a shell burst, or detonated, inside the gun. 

The entire gun crew was blown to pieces. The 
four officers on either side of General Wood were 
killed. He himself received a wound in the muscles 
of the left arm and lost part of the right sleeve 
of his tunic. Six fragments of the shell passed 
through his clothing and two of them killed the 
officers on either side of him. He was the only 
man within a space of twelve feet of the mortar 
who was not instantly killed. Many were wounded, 
including two others of our own officers. 
227 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

After a night in the field first-aid hospital, where 
his arm was dressed, he motored approximately a 
hundred miles to Paris the next day and went into 
the French officers' hospital in the Hotel Ritz. 

This hospital was in the old portion of the Ritz 
Hotel. General Wood was the first foreign officer 
to be admitted to it. It was full of wounded 
French officers and men from the different fronts ; 
some of them from Salonika ; some sent back from 
Germany, hopelessly crippled, and held as unfit 
for further service by the Germans; and many 
from the Western front. 

Here he got very near the soul of the French 
Army and came in touch with that indomitable 
spirit which made that army fight best and hardest 
when things looked darkest. Thanks to an excel- 
lent physical condition he made a rapid recovery, 
described by French surgeons as found only among 
the very young. He was a guest of the French 
Government while at the hospital and received 
every possible courtesy. On the 16th of February 
after having talked with many of the French offi- 
cers in the hospital and called, at their request, 
upon Clemenceau, President Poincare, Joffre and 
228 



The Great War 



others, he left Paris entirely cured of his slight 
wound and proceeded to the headquarters of the 
French Army of the North at Vizay. There he 
met and talked with Generals D'Esperey and Gou- 
rand, visited Rheims and Bar-le-duc and spent the 
day of the 20th at Verdun. 

During the next few days he visited the United 
States Army headquarters at Chaumont and Toul 
and was back in Paris on the 26th, when he re- 
ceived orders from the A. E. F. to return to the 
United States by way of Bordeaux. On the 21st 
of March he arrived in New York and was sum- 
moned four days later to appear before the Senate 
committee on mihtary affairs to report his obser- 
vations. 

He was then examined by the Mayo examining 
board, pronounced absolutely fit physically and 
on April 12th resumed command of the 89th 
Division at Camp Funston, Kansas. 

The training of this division was practically 
finished in late May and the 89th was thereupon 
ordered abroad for service. 

After seeing some of the elements of the division 
off for the evacuation station at Camp Mills, Long 
229 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

Island, New York, General Wood left Funston 
himself and proceeded to Mills to see to the recep- 
tion of his division and look to its embarkation. 
He arrived at the Long Island camp on May 25th 
and there found an order from the War Depart- 
ment relieving him of his command of the 89th 
Division and instructing him to proceed to San 
Francisco to assume command of the Western 
Department. After finishing some necessary 
work he went to Washington on the 27th and saw 
the Secretary of War. Little is known of what 
took place at this conversation except that Gen- 
eral Wood requested that he be reinstated in his 
command of the 89th Division and sent abroad, 
which was refused. 

Wood saw the President, explained the situation 
and was told that the latter would take the mat- 
ter under consideration. 

No consideration was ever reported. 

Meantime the order sending him to California 
created such an uproar throughout the United 
States that it was rescinded and General Wood 
was ordered to Camp Funston again to train a 
new division — the 10th — which was ready to go 
230 



The Great War 



abroad when the armistice was signed on No- 
vember 11th. 

This constitutes General Wood's services to his 
country during the period of the war. 

Much might be said in regard to this history. 
Much might be surmised as to the causes which 
led to keeping the man who was the senior officer 
of the army out of the war entirely. Much — very 
much — has been said throughout this country in 
and out of print during the past two years. The 
theory that he was too old for active service could 
not be a reason, since he is younger than many 
general officers who did see service abroad — 
younger as a matter of fact than General Pershing 
himself. It is hardly conceivable that physical 
condition could have been a reason, since at least 
twice in the last two years he has been passed by 
expert physical examination boards in the regular 
routine of army life and found sound, mentally 
and physically. He does, to be sure, limp and 
has had to do so for years on account of an acci- 
dent in Cuba fifteen or sixteen years ago. Yet 
this could hardly unfit him for service in France 
when it did not unfit him for service in the Philip- 
231 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

pine jungle, or the active life which he has led 
for the past ten years. 

There has been considerable surmise as to 
whether his amazing campaign for preparedness, 
his speeches and his many activities in the officers' 
training camps organization and administration 
prejudiced the authorities against him. This 
again is hardly credible since it is manifestly in- 
conceivable that those men in charge of the prose- 
cution of our part in the great war, with the im- 
mense responsibihty resting upon their shoulders, 
could possibly have allowed personal prejudice 
and favoritism to have played any part in their 
decision in regard to any man — least of all the 
most important man in the Regular Army. 

Some controversy arose as to whether Wood's 
friendship and relation to Theodore Roosevelt 
might not have created hostility in administration 
and army circles. This again is beyond credence 
when the importance of the men on both sides is 
considered and the terrific importance of events 
at the time is taken into account. Here again it 
is inconceivable that any man or group of men 
could at such times and in such circumstances 
232 



The Great War 



allow anything personal to sway his or their 
judgment. 

The incontestable fact still remains, however, 
that the one man in the Army who by his whole 
life in the United States, in many parts of the 
earth, had during a period of thirty years been 
preparing himself for just such an occasion, who 
had for four years been trying to get the people 
of the country and the government to prepare, 
who had appeared before Senate military com- 
missions and other similar bodies and registered 
his belief in the necessity for certain measures, all 
of which were adopted by the Government as rec- 
ommended by him — that the one man who had 
done all this should not have been selected to do 
any active service whatever at the front, but 
should have been offered posts in the Philippines, 
Hawaii and California when he was applying for 
service in France. Lloyd George wanted him; 
France wanted him; and the American Army 
wanted him. 

All sorts and conditions of men throughout the 
United States expressed their opinion upon the 
subject during this war period and are doing so 
233 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

still, but the one man who has said nothing is 
General Wood h-mself. With his inherited and 
acquired characteristic of doing something, of 
never remaining idle, with the habit acquired 
from years of military discipline and respect for 
orders emanating from properly constituted 
authority, he put in his application again and 
again for service and then accepted without public 
comment whatever orders were issued to him. 

Here again is the same simple, direct mind of 
the man who has at no time lost his sense of pro- 
portion, who has not become excited because his 
chance was not given him — the chance for which 
he had spent long years of preparation — who did 
not let tliis outward wallpaper — plaster — showy 
thing divert him from the essential point, the 
great beam of our war preparation house — the 
necessity that every man, woman and child should 
do all he or she could do to help the Government 
of the United States carry the war — or our part 
of it — to a successful conclusion when that Gov- 
ernment finally made up its mind to go in. 

Wood declined to become a martyr. He had 
no bitter feelings. He was, as any other man of 



The Great War 



his prominence and character would be, disap- 
pointed at having no opportunity to serve his 
country at the front. But he took what came to 
him and did it as usual with extraordinary quick- 
ness, effectiveness and thoroughness. 

Indeed speculation on the subject is not likely 
to produce much profit. It is only of importance 
in the present place as illustrating again the 
make-up of the subject of this biographical sketch. 
He took no steps other than those regularly and 
properly open to him to secure service. He at- 
tempted no roundabout methods. He kept his 
own counsel and followed his old maxim of "Do it 
and don't talk about it." His requests for reasons 
for denying him of all men the right to fight for 
his country on the battle line made through proper 
channels — never otherwise — produced no answers 
in any case and to this day the whole amazing 
episode is entirely without explanation. 

Meantime the man's characteristic energy and 
thoroughness produced extraordinary results in 
other fields. 

In his short sojourn in Charleston it was his 
duty to select and prepare at once a certain num- 
235 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

ber of camps, or cantonments as they came to be 
called, within the jurisdiction of the South East- 
em Department. And this he proceeded to do with 
great rapidity. Not only were all the sites he 
selected passed without exception, but they proved 
to be in every instance safe, sanitary and suffi- 
cient for the purpose. This was no easy matter 
with almost every town and city in the South 
sending delegations to him to ask that it be 
selected as the site of one of the camps, with the 
prodigious amount of political influence brought 
to bear from all sides and with the necessity of 
offending nobody, of making all work towards one 
end — the immediate preparation for homes for 
the men who were to make the new army. 

It was all so skillfully handled that there is not 
a place in the South of any size which has not 
sounded and does not sound the praises of Gen- 
eral Wood. He selected the camps and made them 
with that experience and knowledge that were his 
because of the fact that he was an army officer 
and a doctor who had done much the same thing 
and had had much the same work in Cuba and 
the Philippines. 



The Great War 



One would expect something of the sort from 
any able man with such preparation, but one 
would not expect such a man to leave the Depart- 
ment with the extraordinary popularity and the 
multitude of expressions of good will and affection 
which Wood carried away with him after these 
few months of work. 

In the midst of the journeyings to and fro to 
look over possible sites and all the work entailed 
in preparing the camps he found time to supervise 
the three officers' training camps already men- 
tioned, which were carried out upon the lines of 
the earlier ones with the aid of the Officers' Train- 
ing Camps Association. 

Upon being transferred to Camp Funston near 
Fort Riley in Kansas, Wood began in the first 
days of September, 1917, the training of a new 
division of raw recruits from the selective draft. 
He had the assistance of a nucleus of army of^cers 
and some few army men, but the bulk of the divi- 
sion consisted of new men and of new officers 
recently from the officers' training camps. And 
this work was well on its way and the division 
237 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

taking form when he received orders to go to 
Europe. 

It is difficult in this limited space to go into 
the details of his work abroad, and most of it in 
any case was technical matter more adapted to 
a military report. The results of some of his 
conversations are, however, of interest now as 
showing the situation as it appeared to important 
men, military and pohtical, in Europe at that 
time. 

Some one said during the siunmer of 1918 when 
asked how much the American man and woman in 
the street really knew of what was going on in 
Europe, that if the headlines of American news- 
papers were disregarded and the actual tele- 
graphic reports themselves read day by day, 
nearly everything that anybody from commanding 
generals down knew was known to that reader. 
There were, of course, many discussions amongst 
the guiding intellects, political and military, which 
never saw the light. There were, naturally, plans 
discussed and never carried out which the Ameri- 
can citizen did not hear of at any time. But the 
general consensus of opinion seems to be that the 
238 



Tlie Gh-eat War 



American newspaper reader knew almost as much 
as any one of what was happening and that he 
certainly knew as much of what was going to 
happen as the men in the inner circle. 

Much that has come out since the armistice 
shows a condition of affairs almost as the man in 
the street knew it at the time. In the winter of 
1917-18 we knew that a huge drive was scheduled 
by the Germans on the Franco-Belgian front in 
the spring. In the following summer we knew 
the doubtful situation around Chateau-Thierry. 
In the middle of July we knew that something was 
happening, that the Americans were beginning to 
go in in large numbers, that the German "push" 
was slowing up ; and that a turn had been made. 
Finally we knew that the German army was sud- 
denly retiring, and for a month before the armis- 
tice was signed we knew that it was going to be 
signed. Indeed so sure was the American public 
of this last that they celebrated the end of the 
war throughout this great land a week ahead of 
time, because of a report which, though literally 
incorrect, was in essence true and known to be 
true. 

239 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

It is not uninteresting, therefore, to review the 
sentiments and opinions which Wood found upon 
his arrival amongst the French and English states- 
men and soldiers between January 1 and February 
26th, 1918. 

In London Lloyd George, the British Premier, 
knew Wood as the administrator of Cuba and 
the Philippines. He knew also of Wood's expe- 
rience with, and knowledge of European armies. 
He was anxious for Wood to be in Europe. He 
laid great emphasis upon the shortage of American 
air service which made it difficult for American 
troops to work as a separate unit without English 
or French cooperation. He pled for American 
troops at the earliest possible moment and offered 
more transportation facilities — even though Eng- 
land had already transported not only her own 
men but many of ours across the Atlantic. 

General Sir William Robertson stated in Janu- 
ary that there was an impending crisis coming in 
the early spring; that Germany would make an 
immensely powerful drive toward Paris or the 
channel ports or both ; and that in his opinion 
the Allied lines would hold until the Americans 
240 



The Great War 



got into the war with full strength. But he made 
no concealment of the fact that the next six 
months would be very critical ones. 

Marshal Joffre held similar views. Both offi- 
cers expressed the opinion that the summer of 
1918 would be the crisis and deciding point of 
the war. Thej, too, felt the French and English 
lines would hold, but they laid heavy stress upon 
the importance of more troops from America. 

On the French front Wood lunched and had a 
long talk with General Gouraud and another at 
Paris later with General Petain whom he knew and 
who knew well the history of Wood's career in or- 
ganization and administration. Petain is said to 
have expressed the hope that Wood might soon be 
in France on active duty and to have said that 
when he did come he would put him in command 
of an army of French and American troops. 

As Grand Officer of the Legion of Honor, next 
to the highest rank in that order — General Wood 
was naturally received by all French officers and 
statesmen. This order having been conferred upon 
him some years before because of his record in 
Cuba and the Philippines placed him in a small 
241 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

group of men, most of them, naturally, French, 
who are the distinguished men of Europe. His re- 
ception by the President of France, by the pre- 
mier, Georges Clemenceau, and other French 
statesmen came as a matter of course. But the 
conversations which took place between the Amer- 
ican soldier and these men have never, naturally, 
been made public except in some of their bare es- 
sentials. Nor will any one ever know just what 
was said unless one or another of the parties to 
them shall some time disclose it himself. 

There seems to be no doubt, however, of the 
very warm reception which this senior officer of 
the American army was given. His record in 
preparedness work, his record in administrative 
and organization work were all well known to the 
statesmen of these two countries who were from 
their experience with colonial matters so well 
fitted to judge of what he had accomplished along 
these lines. 

General Wood's opinion as the result of his trip 

was that the American troops should serve by 

divisions for a time with the French and English 

rather than as a separate army from the start, 

242 



The Great War 



because of the fact that all matters of supply, 
equipment, artillery, air service and so on which 
were so incomplete in the American service and 
so complete by this time in the British and French 
services would apply to the Americans as well as 
to the others and that the training alongside the 
veterans of over three years of war would make 
the effectiveness of the American troops quicker, 
better and more definite — would in the end in- 
crease efficiency and save life. 

After having reported to the Senate committee 
and returned to Camp Funston he took up with 
immeasurably renewed vigor the work of getting 
the 89th Division, which he was to take abroad, 
ready for its service, and all was prepared when 
the order came for them to move to New York for 
embarkation. This work of transportation being 
practically completed and the big division ready 
to go on board ship, Leonard Wood felt that at 
last his chance to take his part in the war at the 
front had come. 

It is practically impossible for any one, there- 
fore, to realize just what it meant to him, or would 
have meant to any man, to receive notification as 
243 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

he was almost in the act of going on board the 
transport that his command of the division he 
had trained and organized was taken away from 
him, another officer put in his place and he himself 
ordered to the farthest possible extremity of tlie 
United States in the opposite direction. It is 
certainly impossible to express here what his feel- 
ings were since nobody really knows them. 

Imagination, however, which plays so important 
a part in this world's affairs will play its part 
here as elsewhere, and some estimate of what 
effect it had upon the country was shown in the 
outcry which arose everywhere and which created 
such sudden wrath that the order itself was imme- 
diately rescinded and changed to the Funston ap- 
pointment. 

The character of men is exhibited in infinite 
ways and by infinite methods, but never more 
surely than during critical periods when passions 
run high and injustice seems to be in the saddle. 
It is always at such times that reserve force, 
mental strength, and all the sound basic qualities 
which make up what we call character play their 
important parts in the drama of life. No one has, 
244 



The Great War 



so far as our history tells us, shown greater 
strength of this nature than Abraham Lincoln, 
and it is that reserve, that amazing common sense 
which "with malice toward none, with charity 
for all" led him on all occasions no matter how 
extraordinary the provocation to decline to let 
personalities, jealousies, or any of the baser 
passions control his actions or influence his deci- 
sions. 

It would be ridiculous for any one to assume 
that General Wood was not cut to the quick by 
this unexplained action, which took the cup from 
his lips as he was about to drink, but there never 
has appeared anywhere anything emanating from 
him which criticized, questioned or in any way 
took exception to it. One may read, however, 
between the lines of his short good-by to the 
division which he crep' "d many thoughts that may 
have been in his mind and that certainly were in 
the minds of the officers of the 89th to whom this 
simple address was the first intimation that he was 
not to lead them into action in France. It is so 
direct, so simple, so manly that, like all such 
documents, it is only with time that its great 
245 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

hearted spirit makes the true impression on any 
reader. It will take its place in the history of 
this country amongst the few documents which 
live on always because they exhibit a wise ani 
sane outlook upon life and because they make a 
universal appeal to the best that lives always like 
a divine spark in the heart of every man. 

It makes the boy in school exclaim, "Some day 
when I grow up I will do that." It lives in the 
dreams that come just before sleep as the attitude 
the young man would like to take when his critical 
hour comes. It cheers the old, since they can 
say: "So long as this can be done there is no 
fear for our native land." 

Here it is : 

"I will not say good-by, but consider it a 
temporary separation — at least I hope so. I 
have worked hard with you and you have done 
excellent work. I had hoped very much to take 
you over to the other side. In fact, I had no 
intimation, direct or indirect, of any change of 
orders until we reached here the other night. The 
orders have been changed and I am to go back to 
Funston. I leave for that place to-morrow morn- 
246 



STATS OP KAB3A3 
OOTERHOR'S OTTICE. 



KNOVf ALL MEN BY THESE P=IE GENTS : 

ISASUUCB as the life of a state. Its atrength and virtue ^ 
and moral worth are directly dependent upon the character of the citl» 
sens who compose It, and 

INABUDCH Bs It Is a solemn obligation Imposed upon the Gov* 
emor of the state to promote and advance the Interests and well-being 
of the oomnonwealth in every way consistent with due regard for the 
rlshts and prlvilegea of sister otates, and 

WHERBAS, the soldier, Leonard Wood, Major Ueneral in the 
United States Arnjjr and now commandant at Camp Funston, has shown by 
bis daily life, by his devotion to duty, by hlo high ideals and by his 
love of country, that he is a high-nlnded man after our own hearts, 
four-square to all the world, one good to know, 

NOW, THEREFORE, I, Ai^tKur Capper, Governor of the State of 
Kansas, do hereby declare the said 

UAJOR GENERAL LEONARD WOOD 

to be, in character and in ideals, a true Kansan. And by virtue of 
the esteem and affection the people of Kansas bear hla, I do furthermore 
declare him to be to all Intents and purposes a citizen of this state, 
and as suchto be entitled to spealc the Kansas language, to follow Kansas 
customs and to be known as 



CITIZEN EXTRAORDINARY. 



IN WITNESS WHEREOF 1 have hereunto 
subscribed my name and caused to be 
affixed the Great Seal of the State 
of Kansas. Done at Topeka, the 
oapitol, this 19th day of December, 
D. 1917. 





tretary of State. 




A*6t. Seoretarvjlf dtcite* 



The Great War 



iDg. I wish you the best of luck and ask you to 
keep up the high standard of conduct and work 
you have maintained in the past. There is nothing 
to be said. These orders stand; and the only 
thing to do is to do the best we can — all of us — to 
win the war. That is what we are here for. That 
is what you have been trained for. I shall follow 
your career with the deepest interest — with just 
as much interest as if I were with you. Good luck ; 
and God bless you!" 

A few days later Wood had returned to Funston 
and begun preparations for the training of the 
10th Division, when by executive action the Gov- 
ernor of Kansas acknowledged on his own behalf 
and on behalf of the State the General's services 
to his country by making him a "citizen extraor- 
dinary" of the State. 

The story of the Tenth Division is short but 
illuminating. It was composed principally of 
drafted men. Its first groups began to organize 
at Funston on the 10th of August — raw men from 
office, farm and shop. They found there the 
skeletons of so-called regular regiments — regi- 
ments which were regular only in name ; that is to 
249 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

say, there were only a very few regular officerg 
of experience and a limited number of men 
recently recruited under the old system. On the 
24th General Wood reviewed the whole division. 
On November 1st it was ready, trained, equipped 
and in condition both from the physical and the 
military point of view to go abroad. And when 
the armistice was signed on November 11th an 
advance contingent had already gone to France 
to prepare for its reception. About the middle 
of September the British and French Senior Mis- 
sion — three officers of each army — reported at 
Funston and remained there for six weeks. And 
upon their departure on November 1st after a 
long, rigid and critical examination of the division 
they stated that in their opinion it was by far 
the best prepared and trained division that they 
had seen in this country. 

Here again appears the same quality that made 
McKinley appoint Wood Governor-General of 
Cuba; that made Roosevelt send him to organize 
the apparently unorganizable part of the Philip- 
pine Islands ; that caused the French to award 
him a very high order of the Legion of Honor; 
250 



The Great War 



that made the State of Kansas take him into its 
family as a citizen; that led the generals of 
Europe to hope he would come and be one of 
them; and finally that caused many hundreds of 
thousands of his own countrymen to follow him 
and support him in his plans to prepare the people 
of his nation for what eventually came upon them. 

With the signing of the armistice and the vic- 
torious ending of the war Wood's activities did 
not cease. With characteristic energy he began 
the work of looking out for the soldiers who would 
soon be demobilized from the army and thrown 
upon their own resources. He saw how changed 
the outlook of many of these men would be. He 
saw the troubles in which thousands — actually 
millions — of them would be involved, not through 
any fault of their own, not through any fault of 
the Government or of army life, but because they 
had undergone certain mental changes incident to 
training, to active service, and hence coiild not 
again return to the point they had reached when 
their military service began. 

He, therefore, instituted in Chicago, where as 
Commander of the Central Department he had his 
251 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

headquarters, as well as in St. Louis, Kansas 
City and Cleveland, organizations to look to the 
finding of employment for returning officers and 
men. And in addresses and all methods open to 
him he urged the organization of similar bodies 
in all cities to accomplish elsewhere the same ob- 
ject. His attitude was that of the father of 
children — the rearrangement on new lines of the 
American family; and he again found universal 
support. 

^'Appreciation of the work done by our Soldiers, 
Sailors and Marines in the Great War can best 
be shown by active measures to return them to 
suitable civil employment upon their discharge 
from service. The four million men inducted into 
the service, less the dead, are being returned to 
their homes. In seeing that they are returned to 
suitable civil employment, and by that I mean 
employment in which they will find contentment, 
we will find it at times difficult to deal with them. 
We must remember that many of these men, before 
going in for the great adventure, had never been 
far from home, had never seen the big things of life, 
had never had the opportunity of finding them- 
252 



The Great War 



selves. During their service in the army they 
found out that all men were equal except as dis- 
tinguished one from the other by such characteris- 
tics as physique, education and character. They 
discovered that men who are loyal, attentive to 
duty, always striving to do more than required, 
stood out among their fellows and were marked 
for promotion. Naturally many of them now see 
that their former employment will not give them 
the opportunities for advancement which they 
have come to prize, and for that reason they want 
a change. They want a kind of employment which 
offers opportunities for promotion. Many such 
men are fitted for forms of employment which offer 
this advantage, and they must be given the oppor- 
tunity to try to make good in the lines of endeavor 
which they elect to follow. It is not charity to 
give these men the opportunities for which they 
strive. It is Justice. Others are not mentally 
equipped to take advantage of such opportunities 
if offered, and with these we will find it more diffi- 
cult to deal. They must be reasoned with and 
directed, if possible, into the kind of employment 
best suited to their characteristics. Let us remem- 
253 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

ber that a square deal for our honorably dis- 
charged Soldiers, Sailors and Marines will 
strengthen the morale of the Nation and will help 
to create a sound national consciousness ready to 
act promptly in support of Truth, Justice and 
Right."* 

There is, with the differences patent because of 
time and place and surrounding circumstances, a 
flavor to this plea that recalls another address 
upon a similar subject more than fifty years ago: 

"It is for the living, rather, to be dedicated 
here to the unfinished work which they who fought 
here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is 
rather for us to be here dedicated to the great 
task remaining before us — that from these hon- 
ored dead we take increased devotion to that cause 
for which they gave the last full measure of devo- 
tion — that we here highly resolve that these dead 
shall not have died in vain — that this nation under 
God shall have a new birth of freedom — and that 
government of the people, by the people, for the 
people shall not perish from the earth." f 

* Address of Leonard Wood. 
•j- Lincoln's Gettysburg Speech. 

254 



THE RESULT 



X 

THE RESULT 

In these days, therefore, immediately follow- 
ing the Great War it is well to keep in our own 
minds and try to put into the minds of others the 
great elemental truths of life; and to try at the 
same time to keep out of our and their minds in 
so far as possible the unessential and changing 
superficialities which never last long and which 
never move forward the civilization of the human 
race. 

This very simple biographical sketch is not an 
attempt to settle the problems of the hour. Such 
an attempt might excite the amusement and inter- 
est of students of that mental disease known as 
paranoia — students who are far too busy at the 
moment as it is without this addition to the 
unusually large supply of patients — but it could 
not add anything either to the pleasure or enter- 
tainment of any one else. That the simple bio- 
graphical sketch can even approach the latter 
257 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

accomplishment may be held to be a matter for 
reasonable doubt. 

Nor, furthermore, is the sketch an attempt at 
the soap box or other variety of philosophy which 
one individual attempts to thrust down the mental 
throats of his fellow beings. There exists a hazy 
suspicion that the fellow beings are quite com- 
petent to decide what they will swallow mentally 
and what they will, vulgarly speaking, expectorate 
forthwith. 

The simple biographical sketch is a frank 
attempt to express, as at least one person sees it, 
the character, the accomplishments and the service 
rendered by one man to his country throughout 
a life which seems to have been singularly sturdy, 
honest, normal and consistent, and which, there- 
fore, is an example to his countrymen that may in 
these somewhat hectic times well be considered 
and perhaps even emulated. 

At the risk, however, of entering the paranoiac's 
clinic it would seem almost necessary if not even 
desirable to apply the record discussed to the 
situation which confronts us in these days, since 
biography has no special significance unless it 
258 



The Result 



brings to others some more or less effective 
stimulus to better and greater endeavor on their 
own part. 

If, therefore, the life and record of a man like 
Leonard Wood is to be of value to others it must 
to some extent at least be considered in relation 
to the events of his day and time. These events 
have been sufBcientlj startling in the light of all 
previous history to make it perhaps permissible 
to glance over them. 

Roughly speaking, since Wood was born trans- 
portation has become so perfected that, in the 
light of our navy's recent accomplishments with 
the seaplane, it is now possible for a human being 
to go from New York to London in. the same 
period of time that it took then to go from New 
York to New London. It is fair to assume then 
that the distance of New York from London so 
far as human travel goes is or will shortly be the 
same as the distance of New York from New Lon- 
don when Wood was born. 

Roughly speaking since Wood was born inter- 
course between persons by means of conversation 
has become so perfected that it is now possible for 
259 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

two people, one in New York and the other in 
San Francisco, to converse over the telephone — 
wireless or otherwise — as easily as could two per- 
sons when Wood was bom talk from one room to 
another through an open doorway. So that for 
practical purposes the three or four thousand 
mile breadth of this continent is reduced to what 
then was a matter of ten feet. 

One might continue indefinitely, but these two 
examples are sufficient. If San Francisco is no 
further away than the next room and if London 
can be reached as quickly as New London, and if 
myriads of other physical changes of this sort 
have occurred in sixty years, then it is fair to 
assume that there has been an equal amount of 
resulting psychological change. These changes 
in the relation of man to his surroundings and 
the consequent changes in his relations to himself 
and his fellow beings have probably done more 
to rearrange the world on a different basis than 
all the developments of the half-dozen centuries 
that preceded the nineteenth. 

The elimination of distance, the making of 
human relation as easy for continents as for 
260 



The Result 



adjoining communities lessens the size of the world 
and standardizes the rules that govern life. All in- 
tellectual, political, commercial and military pro- 
cediires have changed therefore in the last half 
century to a greater extent than in hundreds of 
years prior thereto. One race in the fifth or sixth 
grade of civilization begins to discover what the 
other race in the first grade is doing. One com- 
mercial country of a lower order finds what it is 
losing because of another country of a higher 
order of commercialism. The laborers of Barce- 
lona discover what the laborers of New York are 
receiving in compensation for the same work. The 
people of Russia discover the different political 
conditions existing amongst themselves and the 
people of England and France. The government 
of the German Empire sees what a united nation 
backed by the biggest army on earth might do in 
Europe. The men of Austria who have no vote 
learn what the men of the United States procure 
from universal suffrage. 

With the belief on every human being's part 
that the other fellow is better off than he, with 
the education which goes on through the medium 
261 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

of emigration and immigration, with the immense 
number of detail short cuts, ^^ith the prodigious 
increase in reading and the resulting acquirement 
of the ideas of others, with the myriad of other 
matters patent to any one who thinks — with all 
this and because of it the methods and procedure 
of daily life have changed entirely throughout 
most of the civiKzed world since a man who is 
now nearly sixty was born. 

At the same time the family remains the same; 
the marriage law is unchanged; the right of pri- 
vate property is what it was in the days of an- 
cient Rome. The Constitution of the United 
States is what it was a hundred and thirty years 
ago. Justice is the same as it was in the time of 
Alexander. The Golden Rule has not been altered 
since the time of Christ. Love, hate, fear and 
courage stand as they were originally some time 
prior to the stone age. 

To revert, then, to the simile of the construc- 
tion of the house, it seems true that while the 
plaster and the wall paper — the decorations of its 
interior and exterior — change from time to time, 
nevertheless on the whole, as a rule, in the main, 
262 



The Result 



the passage of the great ages has not materially 
changed the supports of the structure — and never 
wiU. . 

In the matter of Interior and exterior decora- 
tion periods come and go during which those who 
build houses decorate according to schools of art. 
It is the only belief that any sane and hopeful 
human being can have that these schools of decora- 
tion for the old house of civilization in the main 
steadily improve. If it is not so, then we have 
nothing to live for, nothing to which we may look 
forward. Also, however, there are fashions and 
fads running along by the side of these great 
schools which are suggestive, amusing or ludi- 
crous, as the case n^ay be. The cubists and the 
followers of the old masters paint at the same 
time. One, however, dies shortly and the other 
lives on — often to be sure affected in some slight 
way by the grotesque but honest fad, but never 
giving way to it. 

In the month of November, 1918, greater 

changes of this nature took place in the political 

world than in all the years which preceded that 

month since the beginning of the Christian era. 

263 



The Career or Leonard Wood 

In that month some scores of crowned heads 
stepped down from their thrones and made haste 
to reach shelter as do the rats in a kitchen 
when the cook turns on the electric light. At 
that time something like three hundred millions 
of people gave up their particular forms of gov- 
ernment and to a certain extent have been living 
on since without any substitute. 

Some of these crowned heads have sat on their 
thrones from five to ten centuries. Some of the 
governments have lived as long. 

It looks like a general tumble of the house of 
civilization. And yet most of these millions of 
people go on getting up in the morning, going to 
bed at night and, impossible as it may seem, con- 
ducting commercial enterprises. The kings have 
gone; the governments have gone; yet the people 
remain and their daily life goes on — not as usual 
— but in the main the same. 

At such a time amidst such stupendous changes 
it is natural that an infinite number of plans for 
reconstruction come forward. All the century- 
old panaceas crop up. All the moss-grown plans 
for a perfect world are thrust forward in a new 
264 



The Result 



dress and naturally gain credence. And with the 
increased ease of intercommunication of individuals 
and ideas the opportunity not only for many more 
but for widely divergent theories to make them- 
selves heard is immeasurably increased. Thus it 
becomes possible for a Lenine and a Trotzky to 
leave their tenement flats in the slums of New York 
and proceed to the palaces of the Czar to show 
the hundred and twenty millions of Russians what 
can be done — and, what is far more to the point, 
get a hearing. Thus it becomes possible for the 
International Workers of the World in Russia, 
France, England and America to get together in 
conference in Switzerland or elsewhere and discuss 
how best to destroy not only governments, but 
private property, law, order, the family and all 
the beams of the great house at one time. Thus 
it becomes possible for a host of less radical but 
none the less pernicious plans for the good or evil 
of the world to fly about amongst unstable but 
we41-meaning minds. 

Our country, so remote in miles from the scenes 
of these upheavals, is by the development of mod- 
265 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

ern times so near that it is to a certain extent 
affected by them. 

In a population of one hundred millions in the 
United States there are probably one hundred 
million different views entertained upon each of 
the questions of this disturbed period. But a fair 
classification of them could be safely made into 
radicals, moderates and conservatives — Boilshe- 
viki and theorists, slow-moving and hard-thinking 
citizens and stiff-necked reactionaries — all honest 
and earnest in the main. If the Bolsheviki and 
theorists outnumber the others we shall have a 
situation in the United States similar to that in 
Russia, Austria and Germany. If the stiff-necked 
reactionaries outnumber the others, we shall 
smother the flame for a time only to have it burst 
forth shortly in an infinitely more terrible explo- 
sion. If the slow-moving, hard-thinking citizens 
outnumber the others, we shall maintain the main 
structure of our house so laboriously built 
throughout the ages while we change to some 
extent the nature of the wall paper and the plaster 
to adapt it to modern conditions. 

Some of us want to achieve the first, some the 
266 



The Result 



second and some the third status ; and it would 
be safe to say that up to the present in this coun- 
try the people of the great middle class — the not 
rich, the not poor, the steady business man, the 
ordinary mother of a family — are in the majority 
and are trying to adapt themselves to the new 
conditions even if only in a slow and somewhat 
halting manner. 

It will help them and therefore help the country 
to maintain themselves and itself on an even keel 
until the storm subsides if they can have some 
concrete standard to work by. And as standards 
in this sense usually become established by exam- 
ple, by what each of us thinks the man he looks 
up to is doing, thinking and planning, it seems 
fair to say that the example of a few leading men 
of the strong sanity which characterizes General 
Wood is having now or will have in the future a 
great influence for good. 

When we are all complaining at the changing 
conditions, when we see apparently permanent 
organizations like the government of thousand- 
year-old empires crumbling in a month, when we 
hear the new-old theories for a new form of exis- 
267 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

tence, we are somewhat dazed, somewhat influenced 
by the outward si^ns, and somewhat skeptical 
about our own small but to ourselves important 
outlook. At such a moment the voice of one who 
says in substance : "Do not let superficial changes 
— no matter how important they seem — make us 
forget the law of man and nature; do not forget 
that the fittest survives ; do not imagine that wars 
are over because the most terrible one in history 
is just finished; do not hesitate to prepare for 
your own duties and those of your country; do 
not forget that organization and cooperation pro- 
duce peace, safety, prosperity and happiness" — 
when a voice in our land announces this and its 
owner proves by his whole life the truth of his 
statements, then it pays to listen and inwardly 
digest. 

In spite of all we are being told to the contrary, 
there need be no alarm for the future if the 
country contains enough of such leaders to make 
themselves heard above the babel of new cries and 
beliefs, notwithstanding the attractive pictures 
some of these theorists present. For that reason 
leaders must always exist where progress is to be 
268 



The Remit 



made and the great majority must stand behind 
them to back them up. 

The effective spear cannot do its work without 
its steel point, nor yet without its long handle to 
force the point home. 

This biographical sketch treats of one of these 
spear points and as such represents to a greater 
or less degree all great sane leaders, though it 
speaks of but one. 

Leonard Wood's personality is one of mental 
sanity and physical health. It is non-reactionary 
and non-visionary. It is mUitary only in the sense 
that the army happens to have been his business 
in life. His business might have been that of the 
law, of banking, or leather, without in the least 
changing in it. He once said of this : 

"The officers of the Army and Navy are the 
professional servants of the government in mat- 
ters pertaining to the military establishment. 
They are like engineers, doctors, lawyers, or any 
other class of professional men whose services peo- 
ple employ because they are expert in their line of 
work. They do not initiate wars. Nine-tenths of 
all wars have their origin directly or indirectly in 
269 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

issues arising out of trade. The people make 
war ; the government declares it ; and the officers 
of the army and navy are charged with the respon- 
sibility of terminating it with such means and 
implements as the people may give them." 

His voice raised in behalf of preparedness refers 
therefore to the military, because as a Major- 
General in the United States Army he is not em- 
powered to speak of other walks in life. Yet his 
own wide experience in Cuba and the Philippines 
in administration, very little of which was mili- 
tary, is a witness of his belief in preparedness in 
all life. 

He founded schools where there were none to 
prepare citizens for the new Cuban republic. He 
reorganized and built up customs laws and regu- 
lations where there were only attempts at such in 
order to prepare revenue to build roads and finish 
public works to make a busy and healthy nation. 
He reestablished sane marriage laws in order to 
prepare a solid community resting upon the basis 
of the clearly defined family. In the Philippines 
he instituted local government to prepare the 
islands for self-government. 
270 



The Result 



None of these acts, nor many others of like 
nature, had anything to do with the military. 
They were all based on the law that a sound and 
successful community, whether that community be 
a village, town or nation, rests in the final analysis 
on personal, individual responsibility which in the 
group makes a responsible government, that per- 
sonal responsibility comes only from preparation, 
from execution as a result of preparation and from 
efficiency which is its synonym. 

We study for this or that profession. We 
cannot practice law unless we prepare and take a 
degree. We cannot enter the medical profession 
unless we study and take a degree. Wood's great 
thesis is that we cannot become sound citizens and, 
therefore, in the group a sound nation, unless we 
study and prepare to be such. 

It sounds so simple that one wonders why it is 
written. And yet for the last two years under the 
guise of war necessity this country has been mov- 
ing in quite another direction. Instead of personal 
responsibility we have been substituting more and 
more government responsibility. Instead of indi- 
vidual effort we have been advancing governmental 
271 



The Career of Leonard Wood 

effort. Instead of natural competition we have 
been substituting government regulation. Instead 
of advancing patriotism, nationalism, American- 
ism, we have been letting all these give way to 
internationalism. We have not been preparing 
ourselves as individuals to assume individual re- 
sponsiblity, but in fact we have been giving up that 
responsibility to government. 

It is through the sense of the people quickened 
by such men as Wood that we shall come back to 
sounder methods — not to where we were before. 
That can never be. If it were so, the world would 
not be moving forward. But we shall come back 
to the basic principle that individual initiative, 
energy and the rewards that accrue therefrom are 
and always must be the basis for collective initia- 
tive, energy and the rewards thereof ; that no col- 
lective organization such as a government can re- 
main virile and effective unless its component 
parts — the individuals — remain virile and effec- 
tive. 

The appeal which Wood's life makes to us is 
toward this responsibility of the individual for 
his own work, his own affairs, his own family, and 
272 



The Remit 



to his own country, and that has been found 
throughout history to be the groundwork, the 
foundation upon which civilization rests. Trans- 
lated into current phrase this means that we must 
follow such men as he, keep eternally at work to 
improve ourselves individually, to make a good 
and honest living, to hand on the torch of patriot- 
ism, of sanity and of ever-increasing knowledge 
by furnishing to the world the new generations 
that shall carry on, and to weld and stabilize 
the whole structure by building up Americanism 
within our borders. In the vocabulary of General 
Wood this is translated again into the words: 
"Prepare ! Prepare ! Prepare !" 

Such has been the career of the New Englander 
from Cape Cod who has worked in his own land, in 
the tropics, in many spheres, at many problems 
until at the age of fifty-eight in sound mind and 
body he stands firmly still in the prime of life ready 
for many years yet to come of service and work 
for himself, his family and his fellow countrymen. 



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